Extraction of ibuprofen from baby lettuces by natural deep eutectic systems

Abstract

Vegetable crops can adsorb hazardous pollutants from water and soils. The occurrence of pharmaceuticals in the environment is considered a problematic matter with unknown long-term effects. Thus, the objective of this work was to develop, for the first time, a rapid, sensitive, and ecological methodology based on Natural Deep Eutectic Systems (NADES) to extract ibuprofen in baby lettuce samples. The proposed strategy involves a sustainable sample preparation step, leading to an efficient and selective analytical methodology suitable for high-throughput analysis (<3 samples min). NADES were designed and physicochemically characterized. The effect of experimental variables on extraction selectivity and efficiency: NADES composition, sample/solvent ratio, and extraction time and temperature were studied and optimized, resulting in 0.1 g of dry sample, 1 mL of choline chloride:glycerol 1:5, and 10 min of extraction at 80 °C. The limits of detection and quantification were 2.74 and 8.31 ng g−1 (dry weight), respectively; with a linear range of 8.31–4000 ng g−1 dw. The recovery % and RSD % were 98.1–99.6% and < 2.97%, respectively. The methodology and the sample preparation show excellent green performance using the greenness calculator, obtaining scores of 0.68 and 0.83. Finally, the ibuprofen uptake study revealed that baby lettuces adsorb ibuprofen at high concentration levels.