Solid-phase extraction of carotenoids

In this work, solid-phase extraction (SPE) trapping performance of lutein and β-carotene, which were used as the model molecules of carotenoids, was investigated. The absorption, elution, and enrichment of carotenoids on SPE cartridges with four different sorbents, i.e. C₃₀, C₁₈, diol, and silica, were compared respectively with the help of frontal analysis technique. The high retentions of both lutein and β-carotene were achieved on the C₁₈ and C₃₀ cartridges. The diol and silica cartridges only had good retention for lutein. The optimized SPE method for sample pretreatment for the carotenoids analysis was obtained after the investigation of trapping performance. The method was applied successfully to the analysis of biological sample, i.e. serum and human breast milk. The recovery, accuracy, and precision of SPE method comparing with those of traditional liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) method for the sample pretreatment for the analysis of carotenoids owned a number of advantages such as rapid, no chloroform used, and accurate versus LLE.