Homogeneous liquid-liquid extraction combined with high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection for determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in vegetables

In this article, homogeneous liquid-liquid extraction (HOLLE), combined with HPLC-fluorescence detector (HPLC-FLD), has been developed for the extraction and determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in vegetables. ACN was used as extraction solvent for the extraction of target analytes from vegetables. When the previous extraction process was over, the ACN extract was transferred to the water-immiscible organic phase, tetrachloroethane, used as extraction solvent in HOLLE procedures. Under the optimum conditions, repeatability was carried out by spiking PAHs at concentration level of 12.5 mu g/kg, the RSDs varied between 1.1 and 8.5% (n = 3). The LODs, based on S/N of 3, ranged from 0.025 to 0.25 mu g/kg. Relative recoveries of PAHs from cucumber and long crooked squash samples were in the range of 72.4-104.9% and 65.5-119.3%, respectively. Compared with the conventional extraction method, the proposed method has the advantage of being quick, easy to operate, and having low consumption of organic solvent.