Evaluation of the use of solvent impregnated resins in the analysis of salbutamol in human urine followed by capillary electrophoresis.

In this work, a method for sorption and concentration of salbutamol in urine combined to capillary electrophoresis with UV detection was performed. The procedure is based on the sorption of salbutamol on solvent-impregnated resins that is prepared by an impregnation technique using Aliquat 336 as extractant and XAD-4 resin as the base polymer. Batch studies showed an efficient sorption/desorption results when the salbutamol solution contains NaOH 0.05 mol L? 1 and the eluent is 0.5 mol L? 1 NaCl. Linearity was obtained in the range of 1000?10,000 ng mL? 1 of salbutamol. The limit of quantification was 999 ng mL? 1. The solvent-impregnated resin was used for 10 cycles without a significant loss of the salbutamol quantification capacity. The method was applied to analyze salbutamol in urine samples at levels useful for international health organizations. Although most reports of solvent impregnated resins are related to the extraction of metal ions and only a few organic compounds, the proposed methodology demonstrate that solvent impregnated resins allows the isolation and concentration of salbutamol from complex samples such as urine. Since no SB is recovered using resin without Aliquat 336, this work shows an advantage of SIR over simple adsorption processes.