Determination of Parabens in Beverage Samples by Dispersive Liquid–Liquid Microextraction Based on Solidification of Floating Organic Droplet

A simple and efficient method for dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction of methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben and butylparaben in real beverage samples was developed. It is making use of solidified floating organic droplets of 1-dodecanol which has low density and a proper melting point. Parameters influencing the extraction efficiency, such as the type of extraction and dispersive solvent, the volume of extraction and dispersive solvent, salt effect, pH, extraction time, were optimized and resulted in enrichment factors (EFs) of 84 for methylparaben, 103 for ethylparaben, 115 for propylparaben and 126 for butylparaben. The limits of detection for parabens were 1.52, 1.06, 0.32 and 0.17 ng/mL, respectively. Excellent linearity with coefficients of correlation from 0.9970 to 0.9997 was observed in the concentration range of 5-1,000 ng/mL. The repeatability of the proposed method expressed as relative standard deviations (RSDs) ranged from 2.54 to 3.89% (n = 5). The relative recoveries for parabens in beverage samples were good and in the ranges of 89.8-109.9, 90.2-107.3, 90.9-101.7 and 92.3-118.1%, respectively. Thus, the proposed method has excellent potential for the determination of parabens in beverage samples.