Simultaneous determination of seven phthalic acid esters in beverages using ultrasound and vortex‐assisted dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction followed by high‐performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

A sensitive, rapid, and simple high‐performance liquid chromatography with UV detection method was developed for the simultaneous determination of seven phthalic acid esters (dimethyl phthalate, dipropyl phthalate, di‐ n ‐butyl phthalate, benzyl butyl phthalate, dicyclohexyl phthalate, di‐(2‐ethylhexyl) phthalate, and di‐ n ‐octyl phthalate) in several kinds of beverage samples. Ultrasound and vortex‐assisted dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction method was used. The separation was performed using an Intersil ODS‐3 column (C 18 , 250 × 4.6 mm, 5.0 μm) and a gradient elution with a mobile phase consisting of MeOH/ACN (50:50) and 0.2 M KH 2 PO 4 buffer. Analytes were detected by a UV detector at 230 nm. The developed method was validated in terms of linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, repeatability, accuracy, and recovery. Calibration equations and correlation coefficients (> 0.99) were calculated by least squares method with weighting factor. The limit of detection and quantification were in the range of 0.019–0.208 and 0.072–0.483 μg/L. The repeatability and intermediate precision were determined in terms of relative standard deviation to be within 0.03–3.93 and 0.02–4.74%, respectively. The accuracy was found to be in the range of –14.55 to 15.57% in terms of relative error. Seventeen different beverage samples in plastic bottles were successfully analyzed, and ten of them were found to be contaminated by different phthalic acid esters.