Development and comparison of two dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction techniques coupled to high performance liquid chromatography for the rapid analysis of bisphenol A in edible oils

• Two extraction methods for the analysis of bisphenol A in edible oils were developed.
• Comparison of the validation results showed reversed-phase dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction was better.
• The extractant was 100 μL 0.2 M NaOH solution (80% of methanol, v/v).
• The quantitation limit and detection limit were 6.3 and 2.5 ng g−1.
• Bisphenol A was detected in 5 out of 16 edible oil samples.

In this study, two novel sample extraction methods for the analysis of bisphenol A (BPA) in edible oils were developed by using liquid–liquid extraction followed by a dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (LLE-DLLME) and reversed-phase dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (RP-DLLME). RP-DLLME showed a superior characteristic over LLE-DLLME and other previously reported procedures because of its easy operation, short extraction time, high sensitivity, low organic solvent consumption and waste generation. The optimized extraction conditions of RP-DLLME for 1.0 g of edible oil diluted in 4 mL of n-hexane were: extractant, 100 μL 0.2 M sodium hydroxide solution (80% methanol, v/v); extraction time, 1 min; centrifugation, 3 min. The determination of BPA was carried out by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with a DAD detector. The method offered excellent linearity over a range of 0.010–0.5 μg g−1 with a correlation coefficient of r > 0.997. Intra-day and inter-day repeatability values expressed as relative standard deviation were 1.9% and 5.9%, respectively. The quantitation limit and detection limit were 6.3 and 2.5 ng g−1. The target analyte was detected in 5 out of 16 edible oil samples. The recovery rates in real samples ranged from 89.5 to 99.7%.