Effect of alcoholic strength on the determination of ethyl carbamate in Chinese spirits by high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection

A high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection (HPLC-FLD) method was established for rapid determination of ethyl carbamate (EC) in Chinese spirits. Through the analysis and comparison of the EC peak areas in different alcoholic strengths determined by HPLC-FLD, the effect of alcoholic strength on the determination of the content of EC was found. The alcoholic strength and the peak area of EC showed good linearity in the range of 5% to 65% (v/v) alcohol content, and the correlation coefficients (R-2) were higher than 0.98. Furthermore, the conversion between the peak area of EC with different alcoholic strengths was established by the relative correction coefficient. The method showed a good linearity in the range of 10 to 500 mu g/L for EC with the average recoveries of 98.9% - 108.2% and RSDs of 0.6% - 4.9%. The reliability of the established HPLC-FLD method was evaluated by comparison with GC-MS method. The results showed that the results of two methods were not significantly different. The developed method is simple, sensitive, accurate, and suitable for the rapid determination of EC in Chinese spirits.