Extraction and spectrophotomrtric determination of some parabens using air-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction based on solidification of floating organic drops and its optimization by chemometrics methods

This study addressed an air-assisted liquid-liquid microextraction method coupled with a multivariate calibration method, namely partial least square (PLS). This method was developed for the extraction and simultaneous determination of ethylparaben (EP) and propylparaben (PP) via a spectrophotometric approach. Because of the reproductive and endocrine toxicity for parabens from food, therefore, it is critical to develop sensitive, simple and rapid methods for the determination of trace parabens [1]. Spectrophotometric methods combined with multivariate data analysis have developed as rapid, inexpensive and favorable tools for qualitative analysis [2]. In this work, a two-step microextraction method was used. In the first step analytes were extracted from acidic aqueous solution into dodecanol, as an organic solvent and the second step, the analytes were simultaneously back-extracted into an alkaline aqueous solution. The high absorption signal of dodecanol was the main reason to perform this back extraction [3]. The effects of different parameters such as extraction solvent volume, ionic strength of aqueous solution, pH, number of extraction cycles, and aqueous sample volume were investigated and optimized using (CCD) as the experimental design and analysis. Finally, a multi response optimization approach based on a desirability function (DF) of the factors was employed to simultaneously maximize the response factors (extraction efficiency of parabens).