Quantification of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Water: a Comparative Study Based on Three-dimensional Excitation-emission Matrix Fluorescence

Excitation-emission matrix fluorescence (EEM) was proposed to quantify three polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons of anthracene (AN), phenanthrene (PHE) and pyrene (PY) in this paper. Direct analysis through selecting the appropriate areas from the data of EEMs and another approach using all data of EEM combined with the Parallel Factor (PARAFAC) were discussed respectively. The results showed that the predicted concentrations of PHE and PY approached the actual one for both methodologies, and that the room-mean-square errors of the prediction were no more than 0.5 mu g L(-1). In addition, a new quantificational method was suggested, in which the sum intensity around the peak value replaced the maximum intensity in the selected regions. The sensitivity can be improved ten times compared with the conventional analysis.