Magnetic amino-rich hyper-crosslinked polymers for fat-rich foodstuffs pretreatment in nontargeted analysis of chemical hazards

• Published in: Food chemistry 2023-11, Vol.425, p.136467-136467, Article 136467
• Main Authors: Qi, Yan, Zhang, Jing, Shan, Wenchong, Zhang, Weichunbai, Sun, Jing, Zhang, Li, Jin, Yushen, Shao, Bing
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chemical hazards; Fat-rich foodstuffs; Magnetic hyper-crosslinked polymeric adsorbents; Nontargeted analysis
• ISSN: 0308-8146; 1873-7072
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2023.136467

[Display omitted] •Efficient recoveries of 565 chemical hazards were achieved via Fe3O4@poly(MAAM-co-EGDMA).•Fe3O4@poly(MAAM-co-EGDMA) was fabricated with MAAM and EGDMA through simple bulk polymerization.•The thickness of the polymer shell can be controlled by tuning the proportion of the MAAM/EDGMA.•Fe3O4@poly(MAAM-co-EGDMA) featured promising lipids adsorption in animal and vegetable oils.•The adsorption mechanisms for FFAs and TGs are electrostatic interaction and hydrogen bonding. Nontargeted analysis for chemical hazards is highly desirable in controlling food safety to ensure human health. As the dominating interference in fat-rich foodstuffs, lipids removal is a great challenge in sample pretreatment. Herein, diverse lipids from both animal and vegetable oils are effectively removed and 565 chemical hazards with various physicochemical properties are used for method validation. These benefits are from the designed magnetic amino-rich hyper-crosslinked core–shell polymeric composites (Fe3O4@poly(MAAM-co-EGDMA)) and the application of an auto extraction system. Among them, the amino groups are the key factors for lipid removal. Theoretical calculations, isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), and functional monomer replacement demonstrated that the mechanisms to universally capture free fatty acids (FFAs) and triglycerides (TGs) are electrostatic interaction and supplemented by hydrogen bonding. Overall, this work highlights the great application potentials of polymeric adsorbents as sample pretreatment materials for nontargeted analysis in food safety.