Enhancing Fluorescence Detection Accuracy for Aromatic Pollutants in Aquatic Environments via Absorption Spectroscopy-Based Inner Filter Effect Compensation

Quantitative fluorescence analysis of aromatic pollutants in aquatic environments is frequently compromised by the primary inner filter effect (PIFE) induced by coexisting chromophoric species. In order to address this challenge, we propose a multi-component concentration quantification correction model that integrates transmittance absorbance and lateral (90°) fluorescence intensity. By establishing a coupled model of the excitation light decay dynamics and fluorescence emission, where styrene was used as the target analyte and anthracene/phenanthrene played the role of representative interferents, the inherently nonlinear PIFE was transformed into a tractable linear regression problem. The experiment shows that: under the coexistence of anthracene and phenanthrene, the model reduces the detection deviation of styrene from 40-63% to within 10%, and the correction accuracy of the three-component mixed system is increased by 3-5 times.The model in this work provides a theoretical framework for fluorescence quantitative analysis in complex systems, and also offers a new method for high-precision online monitoring of aromatic organic pollutants.