Vortex-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction coupled with high performance liquid chromatography for the determination of furfurals and patulin in fruit juices

A fast and simple solvent microextraction technique using salting out-vortex-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction (salting out-VALLME) was developed for the extraction of furfurals (2-furfural (2-F), 3-furfural (3-F), 5-methylfurfural (5-MF) and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF)) and patulin (PAT) in fruit juice samples. The optimum extraction conditions for 5 mL sample were: extraction solvent, 1-hexanol; volume of extractant, 200 mu L; vortex time, 45s; salt addition, 20%. The simultaneous determination of the furfurals and PAT were investigated using high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). The separation was performed using ODS Hypersil C18 column (4.6 mm i.d x 250 mm, 5 pm) under gradient elution. The detection wavelengths used for all compounds were 280 nm except for 3-F (210 nm). The furfurals and PAT were successfully separated in less than 9 min. Good linearities (r(2) > 0.99) were obtained within the range 1-5000 mu g L-1 for all compounds except for 3-F (10-5000 mu g L-1) and PAT (0.5-100 mu g L-1). The limits of detection (0.28-3.2 mu g L-1) were estimated at SIN ratio of 3. The validated salting out-VALLME-HPLC method was applied for the analysis of furfurals and PAT in fruit juice samples (apple, mango and grape). (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.