Spectrophotometric Determination of Allura Red AC and Tartrazine in Food Products Using Hydrophobic Deep Eutectic Solvents as an Environmentally Sustainable Micro-Extractor

This paper reports the application of hydrophobic deep eutectic solvents (HDES) as an environmentally friendly alternative for liquid-phase microextraction (LPME) of Allura Red AC and Tartrazine in food products and the spectrophotometric determination of these analytes. The HDES used in this work were prepared by mixing octanoic acid (OctAc) or decanoic acid (DecAc) and tetrabutylammonium bromide (N4444-Br) in a molar ratio of 2:1. An investigation was also carried out regarding the effects of sample pH, sample volume, HDES volume, and concomitants on the analytical performance of the proposed method. The analytical curves obtained for Allura Red AC and Tartrazine in octanoic acid (OctAc)-tetrabutylammonium bromide (N4444-Br) were in the linear concentration ranges of 0.05 to 2.00 mg L-1 and 0.04 to 2.14 mg L-1, with limits of detection of 0.005 and 0.004 mg L-1, respectively. The proposed technique was successfully applied for the determination of Allura Red AC and Tartrazine in food products.