Liquid Extraction for Flavor and Fragrance Analyses in Consumer Products

Abstract

Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry is a powerful tool to analyze flavor and fragrance from raw materials to the final commercial products. During the development of new technologies, most focuses have been given to novel columns, advanced detectors, and automation designs to leverage the instrument capabilities. The fundamental factors including polarity impact on sample homogenization and chemical interaction between analytes and extraction solvents are not equally emphasized during the sampling procedures. The current project focused on the liquid extraction procedures prior to GCMS analysis. Significant nucleophilic reactions were found to take place when a water-ethanol solvent was tried to extract flavor and fragrance ingredients. The isooctane in water-isooctane extraction system is friendly with GC columns and effective to extract the volatiles. However, the surfactants, humectants, and polymers in consumer cleaning products have significant impact on analyte distribution between water and isooctane solvents. The enhanced solubility of certain ingredients in water phase will change their profiling information in isooctane. During such extractions, hydrophilic volatile ingredients can be missed and the results become unreliable. For this reason, a newly designed water-n-propanol-isooctane extraction system was compared. This one-phase sample solution follows the homogenization rule in analytical chemistry and be more representative to the original samples.