Determination of Bisphenol A and Alkylphenols in Soft Drinks by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Fluorescence Detection

Abstract

A highly sensitive and selective method was developed for the purification and determination of bisphenol A and alkylphenols in soft drinks by using 2-(11H-benzo[a]carbazol-11-yl) ethyl chloroformate (BCEC-Cl) as pre-column labeling reagent followed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection. The HPLC sensitivity of bisphenol A and alkylphenols was greatly enhanced through the introduction of BCEC-Cl moiety with excellent fluorescence property into the target molecules. Meanwhile, the introduction of highly hydrophobic BCEC-Cl moiety into the analytes also greatly increased the hydrophobicity of the target compounds and distinguished them from hydrophilic matrices. Therefore, little interference was observed. Solid-phase extraction with C18 cartridges was applied to sample purification procedure with recoveries of higher than 82 %. When 20 mL of sample was used for analysis, the limits of quantifications of the analytes were between 0.06 and 0.1 μg L⁻¹. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of the target compounds in soft drink samples with a much higher sensitivity than traditional HPLC methods.