Rapid determination of phthalate esters in alcoholic beverages by conventional ionic liquid dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction coupled with high performance liquid chromatography

A very simple, fast and environmentally friendly sample extraction method was proposed for the analysis of phthalate esters (PAEs, di-isobutyl phthalate (DIBP), dibutylphthalate (DBP), butylbenzylphthalate (BBP) and bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate (DEHP)) in alcoholic beverages by using conventional ionic liquid dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction. The samples were extracted by 160 μL 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate in the presence of appropriate amount of ethanol and 10% (w/v) sodium chloride solution; the enriched analytes in sedimented phases were analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector (HPLC-DAD). Under the optimum conditions, a satisfactory linearity (in the range of 0.02–1 μg mL−1 for white spirits and 0.01–0.5 μg mL−1 for red wines with the correlation coefficients (r) varying from 0.9983 to 1), acceptable recovery rates (88.5–103.5% for white spirits and 91.6–104.6% for red wines), good repeatability (RSD≤8.0%) and low detection limits (3.1–4.2 ng mL−1 for white spirits and 1.5–2.2 ng mL−1 for red wines) were obtained. The developed method was successfully applied for the determination of the four PAEs in 30 white spirits and 11 red wines collected locally, and the DBP content in 63% (19:30) white spirits exceeded the specific migration limit of 0.3 mg kg−1 established by international regulation.