Ultrasonic extraction and determination of cyanuric acid in pet food

Cyanuric acid is attracting more attention due to its potential toxicity. In the present work, an ultrasonic extraction method in combining with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was proposed for the determination of cyanuric acid in pet food. Among different solvents, methanol was found to be the best one as the extractant due to the strong polarity of cyanuric acid and the interferences in the pet food. The ultrasonic energy permitted an extraction time as less as 30 min, which was much shorter than 240 min required in the magnetic-stirring extraction. Under the selected HPLC conditions, the HPLC method could respond linearly with cyanuric acid at concentrations from 0.008 to 4.0 mg mL−1 with a detection limit of 0.002 mg mL−1. In the analysis of practical spiked pet food samples, the new method yielded satisfactory results.