Environmentally friendly and non-polluting solvent pretreatment of palm samples for polyphenol analysis using choline chloride deep eutectic solvents

- A satisfactory sample pretreatment based on non-polluting solvent.
- Application of choline chloride deep eutectic solvents and their modified materials.
- Solid phase extraction based on deep eutectic solvents.
- Deep eutectic solvents have great potential for the green pretreatment of samples.

In this work, choline chloride (ChCl) deep eutectic solvents (DESs) were evaluated for the pretreatment of palm samples in the analysis of polyphenols, such as protocatechuic acid, catechins, epicatechin, and caffeic acid. During the enrichment step of the pretreatment, eight DESs comprising ChCl with ethylene glycol (EG), glycerol (Gly), xylitol (Xyl), phenol (Ph), formic acid (FA), citric acid (CiA), oxalic acid (OA), or malonic acid (MA), were prepared and applied to the reflux extraction of polyphenols from palm samples. All the DESs exhibited higher polyphenol extraction efficiency than methanol, and the highest extraction efficiency was obtained using ChCl-FA (1:1, mole ratio). For the purification step of the pretreatment, eight ChCl DES-modified adsorbents were prepared by hydrothermal polymerization and packed into solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, and ChCl-Urea, ChCl-Gly, ChCl-FA, and water, were used as eluents. The ChCl DES-modified adsorbents were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface analysis, and the polyphenols were analyzed by mass spectrometry and high-performance liquid chromatograph-ultraviolet detection. The highest purification efficiency was obtained using the ChCl-Ph DES-modified adsorbent as the SPE packing material and ChCl-Urea-H2O (1:1:5, mole ratio), ChCl-Gly (1:1, mole ratio), ChCl-FA-H2O (1:1:5, mole ratio), and H2O as the eluents. Compared to conventional purification processes that employ commercial C18 or C8 SPE columns with organic solvents as eluents, the ChCl DES-based SPE purification process successfully avoided the use of expensive commercial SPE columns and organic solvents. Furthermore, it isolated a larger amount of the target compounds under the same experimental conditions, and could be applied over five cycles with good reversibility. This work indicates that DESs as green solvents have great potential for the totally green pretreatment of samples during the enrichment and purification processes.