Evaluation of the sample treatment influence in green and sustainable assessment of liquid chromatography methods by the HEXAGON tool: Sulfonate-based dyes determination in meat samples

• Published in: Green Analytical Chemistry Vol. 3; p. 100024
• Main Authors: Ballester-Caudet, A., Navarro-Utiel, R., Campos-Hernández, I., Campíns-Falcó, P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 01.12.2022; Elsevier
• Subjects: Dyes; Food; Greenness; Hexagon pictogram; in-tube SPME; Miniaturization; Sustainability; Dyes; in-tube SPME; Sustainability; Hexagon pictogram; IT-SPME; Greenness; Miniaturization; Food
• ISSN: 2772-5774; 2772-5774
• DOI: 10.1016/j.greeac.2022.100024

•How sample treatment can impact greenness and sustainability of liquid chromatography methods.•HEXAGON tool applied in the context of several LC procedures for control of color additives in food.•A new analytical method has been developed based on in-tube solid phase microextraction (IT-SPME) coupled on line to capillary LC-DAD.•IT-SPME-CapLC_DAD by minimizing sample treatment and miniaturizing this step achieved better greenness and sustainability.•New coccine (E124) was found in meat, but below the established Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) value. Green and Sustainable assessment of sample treatment has been carried out when using liquid chromatographic methods in food analysis. Particularly, published sulfonate-based dyes determination by conventional liquid chromatography with diode array (HPLC-DAD) or mass detectors (HPLC-MS/MS) was selected as starting point. Greenness-sustainability have been quantitatively evaluated by means of the HEXAGON tool, in which sample treatment and method characteristics noticeably play a key role in defining the figures of merit of the analytical procedure. According to the evaluation results that are represented in a hexagon pictogram with an overall score from 0 to 4 (the lower the score, the greater contribution), a new analytical method is proposed by means of both minimizing and miniaturizing sample treatment step. In-tube solid-phase microextraction online coupled to capillary LC (IT-SPME-CapLC-DAD) provided a more green and sustainable alternative to current food dyes analysis without losing sensitivity (LODs 0.5-1 µg/g sample). The proposed method was tested on chicken meat samples (2 g), using ethanol-ammonia-water mixture (80:1:19, v/v/v; 5 mL) as extraction solution. The arithmetic means of the HEXAGON scores (sav) were: 1.71, 2.57 and 2.71 for IT-SPME-CapLC-DAD, HPLC-DAD and HPLC-MS/MS, respectively. The proposed method was closer than the others tested to a hypothetical LC procedure without sample treatment, which provided a sav value of 1. [Display omitted]