It is significantly
crucial to develop a robust pretreatment for
the quantitative analysis of herbs. However, the traditional strategies
are time-consuming, tedious, and not eco-friendly. In this work, cloud
point extraction (CPE) is engineered for the simultaneous separation
and enrichment of ferulic acid (FA), chlorogenic acid (CLA), and caffeic
acid (CA) from dandelion prior to its determination by high-performance
liquid chromatography (HPLC). A famous nonionic surfactant of Triton
X-114 was selected as an extractant of CPE, and parameters affecting
the extraction, such as surfactant concentration, salt content, pH
value, temperature, and incubation time, were investigated carefully.
Furthermore, the well-designed CPE with ultrasonic assistance combined
with HPLC was developed for the detection of the target analytes in
dandelion. The established method having a good linearity in the range
of 0.15–26.2 mg L–1 with R
2 more than 0.9979 and the spiked recoveries ranging from
81 to 96% was applied to test real samples of dandelion. The contents
of CA in samples were consistent with those assayed by the method
(Chinese Pharmacopoeia 2015). The proposed method afforded good analytical
performances, shorter pretreatment time (65 min), and less organic
solvent consumption (less than 1.0 mL). It was proved that the developed
method presented a facile, inexpensive, efficient, and environment-friendly
pretreatment and can be used for the quantitative analysis of CLA,
CA, and FA in dandelion. As expected, the proposed method would be
a promising potential for the quality analysis of herbal medicines.
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