Dummy Molecularly Imprinted Solid-Phase Extraction for Selective Determination of Five Phthalate Esters in Plastic Bottled Functional Beverages

In this paper, a highly selective sample cleanup procedure combing dummy molecular imprinting and solid-phase extraction (DMI-SPE) was developed for the simultaneous isolation and determination of five phthalate esters in plastic bottled beverages. The new imprinted microspheres were synthesized via precipitation polymerization using diisononyl phthalate as a dummy template that showed high selectivity and affinity to the five kinds of phthalate esters and were successfully applied as selective sorbents of DMI-SPE for the simultaneous determination of the phthalate esters from plastic bottled beverages. Good linearity was obtained in a range of 5.0-750.0 μg/L, and the average recoveries of the five phthalate esters at three spiked levels ranged from 84.3 to 96.2% with the relative standard deviations less than 5.49%. The developed extraction protocol eliminated the effect of template leakage on quantitative analysis and could be applied for the determination of phthalate esters in complicated functional beverages products.