The effect of surfactant on headspace single drop microextraction for the determination of some volatile aroma compounds in citronella grass and lemongrass leaves by gas chromatography

Abstract

A rapid method for the determination of some volatile aromatic compounds (VACs), including citronellal, citronellol, neral, geranial, geraniol and eugenol in citronella grass and lemongrass leaves, was developed using surfactant as a surface tension modifier while performing headspace single drop microextraction (HS-SDME) prior to analysis by GC-FID. Experimental parameters were optimized, including type of single drop solvent, extraction temperature and time, enrichment time, sample volume, and salt and surfactant concentration. In this study, the effect of surfactants (SDS, Triton-X and CTAB) on the HS-SDME of VACs was investigated in detail. It was found that a small amount of SDS could contribute to decreasing the surface tension of liquid phase, resulting in an improvement of the extraction efficiency. The proposed method gave higher concentration factors (2.39–24.6 fold) of these VACs in real samples, and good recovery (97.6–109%) and precision (7–15% RSD). The advantage of this procedure is then recognized as green chemistry because its simple and cheap method with reduced analysis time and toxicity. The sample preparation can easily be applied to routine analysis of these VACs in citronella grass and lemongrass leaf samples.