Multicommuted flow injection method for fast photometric determination of phenolic compounds in commercial virgin olive oil samples

• Automatic-multicommuted olive oil phenols determination.
• Fast alternative against batch Folin–Ciocalteu method.
• Suitable to be implemented in routine analysis laboratories as screening method.
• Promising alternative to previous automatic spectrophotometric methods.

A multicommuted flow injection method has been developed for the determination of phenolic species in virgin olive oil samples. The method is based on the inhibitory effect of antioxidants on a stable and colored radical cation formation from the colorless compound N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamine (DMPD
• +) in acidic medium in the presence of Fe(III) as oxidant. The signal inhibition by phenolic species and other antioxidants is proportional to their concentration in the olive oil sample. Absorbance was recorded at 515 nm by means of a modular fiber optic spectrometer. Oleuropein was used as the standard for phenols determination and 6-hydroxy-2,5,7,8-tetramethylchroman-2-carboxylic acid (trolox) was the reference standard used for total antioxidant content calculation. Linear response was observed within the range of 250–1000 mg/kg oleuropein, which was in accordance with phenolic contents observed in commercial extra virgin olive oil in the present study. Fast and low-volume liquid–liquid extraction of the samples using 60% MeOH was made previous to their insertion in the flow multicommuted system. The five three-way solenoid valves used for multicommuted liquid handling were controlled by a homemade electronic interface and Java-written software. The proposed approach was applied to different commercial extra virgin olive oil samples and the results were consistent with those obtained by the Folin Ciocalteu (FC) method. Total time for the sample preparation and the analysis required in the present approach can be drastically reduced: the throughput of the present analysis is 8 samples/h in contrast to 1 sample/h of the conventional FC method. The present method is easy to implement in routine analysis and can be regarded as a feasible alternative to FC method.

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