Ultrasound-Assisted Extraction of Haloacetic Acids from Vegetables

Chemists from the University of Cordoba (Cordoba, Spain) used a continuous ultrasound-assisted approach to extract nine haloacetic acids from vegetables and conversion to methyl esters for gas chromatography (GC) analysis. Acidic methanol was used as the extraction solvent, and simultaneous extraction and derivatization was complete in 15 min. The esterified haloacetic acids were isolated after sample preparation by liquid?liquid extraction with n-hexane and subsequent GC analysis with electron-capture detection.