Preconcentration of zearalenone in various foods with ionic liquid based dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction and HPLC determination

In this study, a simple, fast and efficient ionic liquid based dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction was developed for the preconcentration of zearalenone before its analysis with high performance liquid chromatography. 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide and 1-methyl-3-octylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide were used as extraction solvent in the method. The parameters affecting the extraction efficiency such as sample pH, type and volume of dispersive solvent, volume of ionic liquid, time of extraction and centrifugation, salting effect were optimized with both ionic liquids. The higher extraction efficiency was obtained with 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide. Under the optimum conditions, the method for zearalenone determination was linear in the range of 1-750 ppb and the limit of detection was 0.25 ppb for zearalenone. The inter-day and intra-day precision was in the range of 1.36-3.02 percentage as percentage relative standard deviation. The developed method was successfully applied to beer and cereal (wheat and corn) samples. The recovery percentages of zearalenone for spiked samples were between were 80.0 and 100.0 percentage.