A Simple Analytical Method for Ethyl Carbamate in Alcoholic Beverages

Abstract

A simple and rapid method for the quantitative determination of ethyl carbamate (EC) in alcoholic beverages was developed.Twenty grams of sample was placed onto an Extrelut 20 column after the pH of the sample had been adjusted to 8.0, and the column was eluted with 70ml of dichloromethane. The eluate was mixed with 1.8ml of acetonitrile and made up to 60ml. The solution, after purification through Sep-pak Florisil, was concentrated to about 5ml using a Kuderna-Danish concentrator, then to 0.5ml with a stream of nitrogen. The test solution was alkylated with N, N-dimethylformamide dimethylacetal, purified by Extrelut column chromatography and concentrated. The derivation of EC was checked by capillary gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector.The recovery from three kinds of alcoholic beverages spiked with EC at the level of 300ppb was 70.9-86.3%, and the detection limit was 30ppb. This is a little higher than that of our previous method, i. e., 10ppb, but the proposed method is very rapid compared with our previous method, and it took only five or six hours to analyze one sample.By using this method, nine samples of commercial alcoholic beverages, sake, beer, shochu and sour, gin fizz, red wine, white wine, bourbon whisky and brandy were analyzed. Trace amounts of EC were detected in four samples.