Method development for the analysis of phthalate esters in tea beverages by ionic liquid hollow fibre liquid-phase microextraction and liquid chromatographic detection

A novel method, termed ionic liquid-based hollow fibre liquid phase microextraction (IL-HF-PLME), coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed for separation and preconcentration of three phthalate esters (PAEs) in tea beverage. In the present study, ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methy-limidazolium hexafluorophosphate ([BMIm]PF₆) was placed in the porous-walled polypropylene hollow fibre as the acceptor phase, and nonanol was used as the supported liquid membrane phase that accomplished extraction. Several important parameters influencing the extraction efficiency were investigated in detail. Under the optimized conditions, good linearity occurred in the range of 5–1000 ng mL⁻¹ with the correlation coefficients values above 0.998. The limits of detection ranged from 0.67 to 1.73 ng mL⁻¹. Recoveries of three PAEs in two kinds of spiked tea beverage samples (PAEs, 10.0–100.0 ng mL) were between 94.2 and 103.4%, with relative standard deviations (RSDs) ranged from 1.77 to 3.02%. The enrichment factors were 200. The developed IL-HF-PLME method allowed the simple, rapid, and sensitive determination of phthalate esters in tea beverage samples with an extraction time of just 4 min.