A liquid–liquid extraction technique for phthalate esters with water-soluble organic solvents by adding inorganic salts

In the presence of inorganic salts, the mixture solution of some water-soluble organic solvents and water can form two clearly separated phases. One is the organic solvent rich phase, the other is the water rich phase. In the phase separation process, hydrophobic solutes dissolved in the mixture solution such as phthalate esters can be extracted into the organic solvent rich phase quantitatively. Based on this phase separation phenomenon, a liquid–liquid extraction technique of phthalate esters using water-soluble organic solvents as organic phases was developed. Several important parameters affecting the extraction efficiency including the kind and the amount of water-soluble organic solvents, the kind and the amount of inorganic salts and the pH of the sample solutions were carefully studied. This new extraction technique has been applied to the HPLC analysis for water lixivium of plastic wrapping film. Under the optimized conditions, detection limits of 1.5, 2.3, 1.0, 2.6, 1.3 and 3.0 ng mL−1 were obtained for diethylphthalate, di-n-propylphthalate, di-iso-butylphthalate, dicyclohexylphthalate, di-n-octylphthalate and di-n-nonylphthalate ester respectively. The strongpoints of this new liquid–liquid extraction technique are the easy phase separation, rapid partition equilibrium, less toxicity and very good compatibility with subsequent HPLC determinations.