Determination of Curcumin in Food with Homogenous Liquid-Phase Microextraction Preconcentration and Spectrophotometric Determination

Abstract

Antioxidants play a role in the transformation of free radicals into more stable chemical structures. Work on phenolic antioxidants has accelerated in recent years. Curcumin is a natural phenolic with antioxidant properties. In this study, a salt-supported homogenous liquid-phase microextraction method was used for preconcentration and spectrophotometric determination of curcumin for the first time. The curcumin was transferred into the organic phase using cyclohexylamine as the extraction solvent at pH values between 2.0 and 7.0 and determined by spectrophotometry. The results showed that the performance of the method for curcumin was unaffected by pH. The pH of the sample solution, the mass of salt, and the volume of the solvent were optimized, and the influence of the matrix types was investigated. The limits of detection and quantification were 1.44 and 4.80 µg L⁻¹ for curcumin. The developed method was employed for the analysis of food samples.

Keywords:

• Curcumin
• cyclohexylamine
• salt supported homogeneous liquid phase microextraction
• spectrophotometry
• phenolics