A method for the determination of four polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) such as benzo[a]anthracene, chrysene, benzo[b]fluoranthene and benzo[a]pyrene in olive oil by high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescent detection (HPLC-FLD) was developed. The olive oil samples were diluted with isopropanol and cleaned-up by a solid phase extraction cartridge with π-π specificity. Critical isomers were separated by gradient elution with water-acetonitrile on an Agilent ZORBAX Eclipse PAH column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.8 μ m). The calibration was performed by the use of matrix-matched calibration standards. The results showed that there were good linear relationships for the four PAHs in the range of 2.4-40 μ g/L with correlation coefficients of 0.9990-0.9999. The limits of quantification (LOQs) ranged from 0.147 to 0.413 μ g/L, and the recoveries of the spiked samples ranged from 95.5% to 103.2%. The intra-day and inter-day precisions were in the ranges of 0.10%-1.69% and 2.48%-2.93% (n=5), respectively. The method has the characteristics of high sensitivity, low detection limit and good precision, and is suitable for rapid and accurate quantitative detection of the four PAHs in olive oil.
Keywords: high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescent detection (HPLC-FLD); olive oil; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs); solid phase extraction (SPE).