Abstract
Thermal processing techniques are often accompanied by the production of many harmful compounds such as heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs). To protect human health, an efficient and environmentally friendly method, namely, homogeneous liquid-liquid microextraction (HLLME), was investigated. This method is based on a surfactant-assisted hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent for the determination of HAAs in edible fried insect samples prior to their analysis by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with UV detection. A hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent (as extraction solvent) was synthesized using decanoic acid as a hydrogen bond donor and tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBABr) as a hydrogen bond acceptor and then characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The surfactant was used as the emulsifier and induces mass transfer, resulting in an increasing extraction efficiency of the proposed method. Various factors affecting the extraction performance were investigated and optimized. A matrix-match calibration method was used to analyze HAAs in high heat-treated edible fried insect samples. Under optimized conditions, the proposed method showed good linearity (R(2) ≥ 0.99) with satisfactory limits of detection and satisfactory reproducibility with relative standard deviation of less than 10.0%. Furthermore, the procedure greenness was assessed using the Analytical Eco-Scale. This paper represents the first application of HLLME based on a surfactant-assisted hydrophobic deep eutectic solvent to analyze HAAs in edible fried insect samples.