Microextraction of sulfonamide residues in honey prior to their analysis by ultra-high performance liquid...

The contamination of sulfonamide in food and environmental applications has highlighted a great necessity to develop amphoteric adsorbents for their simultaneous extraction and determination. The combination of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide with alginate-MS, which has a wide surface area, high porosity, high water absorption, and biodegradability, as an adsorbent for the determination of sulfonamide residues by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-photodiode array detector (UHPLC-PDA) was proposed. Convenient conditions led to the facile synthesis of the sorbent. The sorbent was then characterized. Under the optimized conditions, good analytical performance of the proposed μ-SPE method was obtained with a wide linear range (3-70 μg L^-1) and low detection limit (0.3-0.9 μg L^-1). The limits of detection ranged between 0.9 and 3.0 μg L^-1 for all analytes. The precision in term of relative standard deviation was less than 5 % and 13 % for intra-day and inter-days, respectively. In addition, the proposed method provides high enrichment factor ranging from 40 to 76 fold. The developed method demonstrates excellent applicability for efficiently determining sulfonamide residuals in honey samples with satisfactory recoveries in the range of 76.2-115.1 %. The four greenness assessment tools were selected to prove the eco-friendly nature of the method.