Chlorophenols are used widely in industry as intermediates in the production of dyes, plastics and pharmaceuticals, and are commonly found in pulp and paper mill wastewater, which pollute the groundwater sources. The harmonization of the analysis of chlorophenols in water is of importance due to the toxicity of these components and the presence in the aquatic environment. In the previous research, we demonstrated a fast simple preconcentration and microextraction method, head space in-tube microextraction (HS-ITME), which was initially used for determination of chlorophenols (CPs) and BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and m-xylene) in wine and water samples, respectively. Rapidity, high enrichment factor, simplicity of operation and low cost are some of the advantages of this method. In this study HS-ITME is applied to determine six trichlrophenols in a water sample. At first, an acceptor phase was injected into the capillary in a desired duration of time. The capillary inlet is placed in the headspace above an acidified donor solution; volatile acidic analytes were extracted into the acceptor phase (a basic solution) in the capillary. After extraction, the analytes enriched in the basic acceptor plug were analyzed with capillary zone electrophoresis.
Some effective parameters on extraction, such as donor volume, donor pH, type of acceptor and its volume, waiting time, pre-injection volume, salt addition, extraction time and temperature were investigated. Also, the influence of adding organic additives on the headspace analysis of trichlorophenols is investigated.