Simultaneous determination of nine preservatives in food by liquid chromatography with the aid of coagulant in the clean-up process

A simple HPLC method was developed for the simultaneous analysis of nine preservatives in food including benzoic acid, sorbic acid, dehydroacetic acid, methyl paraben, ethyl paraben, isopropyl paraben, propyl paraben, isobutyl paraben and butyl paraben. Samples were extracted with 60 v/v% methanol containing poly-aluminium chloride (PAC) and sodium hydroxide prior to analysis. PAC, which is normally used as a coagulant, was successfully applied to remove interfering substances from the samples. The method showed good linearity with coefficients of determination higher than 0.999 over the range of 0.2–5 µg ml–1 for all target preservatives. LOQs of the method were in the range of 0.002–0.008 g kg–1. Method performance was evaluated in a variety of foods demonstrated to have quantitative recoveries of 81.7–102.5% with satisfactory intra-day precision of < 3.7% and inter-day precision of < 6.5%. The method also demonstrated applicability to real foods containing preservatives.