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Cannabis is an ancient plant that has been used for therapeutic and recreational purposes. Nowadays, industrial hemp, a variety with low concentration of the psychoactive cannabinoid Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and high concentration of non-psychoactive cannabinoids, is getting more and more interest in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industry. However, cannabis not only contains cannabinoids as bioactive components but also other metabolites like terpenes and phenolic compounds, and the content of these interesting secondary metabolites greatly differs with the genetic variety of the plant. Due to the huge complexity of composition of the cannabis matrix, in this work, a comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography (LC × LC) method has been developed as a very power separation technique coupling a pentafluorophenyl (PFP) and a C18 in the first and second dimensions. Two industrial hemp strains (cookie and gelato) were analyzed to determine the difference in their content of cannabinoids and phenolic compounds. To do this, a new demodulation process was applied for the first time to transform 2D raw data into 1D data which allowed carrying out the chemometric analysis needed to determine the statistical differences between the hemp strains. The cookie strain presented a total of 41 cannabinoid markers, while the gelato strain presented more representative phenolic compounds, in total 24 phenolic compounds were detected as potential markers of this sample. These differences in the chemical composition could determine the industrial destiny of the different hemp strains. Graphical abstract

Cannabis is an ancient plant that has been used for therapeutic and recreational purposes. Nowadays, industrial hemp, a variety with low concentration of the psychoactive cannabinoid Δ

A novel ionic liquid (IL)-based microextraction method has been developed for the determination of four hydroxylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OHPAHs) in urine samples. The water soluble IL-based surfactant selected as extraction solvent is decylguanidinium chloride (C10Gu-Cl), the cytotoxicity and micellar behavior of which were evaluated. The proposed salt-induced IL-based preconcentration method simply consists in adding NaClO4 to the aqueous medium containing the IL to promote its water insolubility. The entire method was optimized, requiring the use of only 20 μL of C10Gu-Cl for 10 mL of diluted urine sample (1:10) without any pH adjustment, followed by the addition of NaClO4 to ensure a 5% (w/v) content. A cloudy solution was observed immediately, and after the application of 4 min of vortex and 8 min of centrifugation, the droplet was diluted up to 60 μL with a mixture of acetonitrile:water (30:70) and injected into the liquid chromatograph with fluorescence detection. The method was validated using both synthetic urine and human urine as matrix for the determination of the four OHPAHs. The following analytical features were obtained: detection limits down to 1 ng·L-1 in real urine; inter-day reproducibility (as RSD in %) always lower than 17% when dealing with real urine samples spiked at 80 ng·L-1; and average relative recoveries of 102% in real urine samples at such low spiked levels. Despite the simplicity of the proposed method, it performed successfully with complex urine samples.

Micellar solid-phase microextraction (MSPME) coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has been used to obtain partition coefficients of a group of 18 substituted aromatic hydrocarbons to ionic and nonionic micelles. Statistical and factor analyses have been utilized to establish some general equations relating molecular descriptors of non-substituted polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and their partition coefficients obtained by MSPME. The obtained equations have correlation coefficients higher than 0.94. They are used to predict hydrocarbon-micelle partition coefficients for a group of hydrocarbons with reported literature values giving a correlation coefficient of 0.98 and a standard deviation of the prediction of 0.182. The predictive model was also applied to substituted polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons with partition coefficient values obtained by MSPME, with a 69% level of success.

The use of mixed hemimicelles of ionic liquid (IL)-based surfactants in a magnetic-based micro-dispersive solid-phase extraction (m-μdSPE) approach is described. Not only is the symmetric monocationic IL-based surfactant 1,3-didodecylimidazolium bromide (C12C12Im-Br) studied for first time in m-μdSPE, but double-salt (DS) IL (DSIL)-based surfactants are also examined. Nine DSIL-based surfactants were formed by combination of C12C12Im-Br with other IL-based surfactants, including nonsymmetric monocationic and dicationic ILs combined at three different molar fractions. The analytical application was focused on the determination of a group of eight phenols, including bisphenol A, in water samples. The best results were obtained with the DSIL formed by C12C12Im-Br (molar fraction 0.5) and 1-hexadecyl-3-methylimidazolium bromide (C16MIm-Br), after proper optimization of the overall method in combination with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and diode-array detection (DAD). The optimum conditions for 100 mL of water samples require a small amount (10 mg) of Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles, a low content (5.0 mg of C12C12Im-Br and 3.9 mg of C16MIm-Br) of the selected DSIL, pH 11, a sonication time of 2.5 min, and an equilibration time of 5 min with the aid of NdFeB magnets, followed by elution of phenols, evaporation, and reconstitution with 0.5 mL of acetonitrile. The overall m-μdSPE-HPLC-DAD method is characterized for limits of detection down to 1.3 μg · L(-1), intraday relative standard deviations lower than 13 % (n = 3), and interday relative standard deviations lower than 17 % (n = 9), with a spiking level of 15 μg · L(-1); with enrichment factors between 15.7 and 141, and average relative recoveries of 99.9 %.

A sampling and analysis method for the determination of 21 phenolic compounds in smoke samples from biomass combustion has been developed. The smoke is used to make smoked foods, following an artisanal procedure used in some parts of the Canary Islands. The sampling system consists of a Bravo H air sampler, two impingers, each one containing an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide 0.1 mol L−1, followed by a silica gel trap. The variables optimized to reach the best sampling conditions were volume of absorbent solution and sampling flow. Under the optimum conditions, 100 mL of absorbent solution of NaOH 0.10 mol L−1 and 2 L min−1 for the sampling flow, sampling efficiencies are higher than 80%. Analysis of phenolic compounds was carried out by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled to gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Five different fiber coatings were employed in this study. By means of a central composite design, extraction time, salt concentration, and pH of the solution were optimized: 65-μm carbowax–divinylbenzene, extraction time 90 min, concentration in NaCl of 35% (m/v), and pH 2 yielded the highest response. Detection limits of phenol and their alkyl derivatives, guaiacol and eugenol, are between 1.13 and 4.60 ng mL−1. 3-Methoxyphenol, 2,6-dimethoxyphenol, and vanillin have detection limits considerably higher. Good linearity (R 2≥0.98) was observed for all calibration curves in the established ranges. The reproducibility of the method (RSD, relative standard deviation) was found to oscillate between 7 and 18% (generally close or lower than 10%).

The beneficial effects of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (BMIm-BF(4)) ionic liquid (IL) as mobile phase additive, desorption solvent, and memory effect suppressor in solid-phase microextraction (SPME)-high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection for the determination of six heterocyclic aromatic amines have been evaluated for the first time. Several chromatographic parameters have been evaluated in the presence or absence of IL or using triethylamine as the most common mobile phase additive, with a Nova-Pak C18 stationary phase. This IL was found to be clearly superior to triethylamine for efficiency as well as peak shape enhancement and sensitivity increase. SPME was chosen because it is faster than conventional extraction techniques and allowed us to minimize the use of organic solvents. However, memory effect may become a problem when a high-sensitivity detector is used. The appropriate conditions for the desorption step and to eliminate the memory effect involving BMIm-BF(4) were established and optimized. The method was applied for the determination of these compounds in commercial meat extracts.

An environmentally friendly method to extract endocrine-disrupting phenols (EDPs) from seawaters was realized using nonionic surfactant mixtures and micelle-mediated extractions. The preconcentration step was achieved directly in the seawater matrix, and was followed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultraviolet (UV) detection without any clean-up steps to remove the surfactant mixture prior to injection. Various nonionic surfactant mixtures were used, and polyoxyethylene-10-laurylether (POLE) with polyoxyethylene-4-laurylether (Brij 30) was found to be the best to work with. Method optimization involved maximizing the preconcentration factor using the studied mixtures. The proposed method gave extraction recoveries ranging from 83.3 to 114.4% for an EDP spiking level of 46.7 microg L(-1), and from 63.4 to 112.4% for a spiking level of 4.7 microg L(-1) for EDPs studied in real seawater matrices, with relative standard deviations of12.1%. The detection limits of the method varied from 0.18 microg L(-1) for bisphenol A (BPA) to 1.17 microg L(-1) for 4-cumylphenol (4-CP). The method was applied to seawaters from the Canary Islands with successful results.