Synthesis and application of a carbamazepine-imprinted polymer for solid-phase extraction from urine and wastewater

A molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) designed to enable the selective extraction of carbamazepine (CBZ) from effluent wastewater and urine samples has been synthesised using a non-covalent molecular imprinting approach. The MIP was evaluated chromatographically in the first instance and its affinity for CBZ also confirmed by solid-phase extraction (SPE). The optimal conditions for SPE consisted of conditioning of the cartridge using acidified water purified from a Milli-Q system, loading of the sample under basic aqueous conditions, clean-up using acetonitrile and elution with methanol. The attractive molecular recognition properties of the MIP gave rise to good CBZ recoveries (80%) when 100 mL of effluent water spiked with 1 μg L⁻¹ was percolated through the polymer. For urine samples, 2 mL samples spiked with 2.5 μg L⁻¹ CBZ were extracted with a recovery of 65%. For urine, the linear range was 0.05-24 mg L⁻¹, the limit of detection was 25 μg L⁻¹ and precision, expressed as relative standard deviation at 0.5 mg L⁻¹ (n = 3), was 3.1% and 12.6% for repeatability and reproducibility between days, respectively.