Ultrasound-assisted emulsification-microextraction for the sensitive determination of ethyl carbamate in alcoholic beverages.

A method based on ultrasound-assisted emulsification-microextraction (USAEME) was proposed in this contribution for the determination of ethyl carbamate (EC) in alcoholic beverages using gas chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometry. To achieve the determination of EC in alcoholic beverages, the influences on the extraction efficiency of type and volume of extraction solvent, temperature, ionic strength, alcohol content, and extraction time were studied, once the extraction solvent had been selected. The optimized conditions were 200.0 μL of chloroform at 30 °C during 5 min with 15% (m/v) sodium chloride addition. The detection limit, relative standard deviations, linear range, and recoveries under the optimized conditions were 0.03 μg L(-1), 4.2-6.1%, 0.1-50.0 μg L(-1), and 80.5-87.9%, respectively. Moreover, the feasibility of the present method was also validated by real samples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that USAEME has been applied to determine a strongly hydrophilic compound in alcoholic beverages.