Development and evaluation of an automated solvent-assisted flavour evaporation (aSAFE)

Abstract Artefact-avoiding isolation of the volatiles from foods is a crucial step before analysis odour-active compounds by gas chromatography (GC). In past 20 years, solvent extraction followed solvent-assisted flavour evaporation (SAFE) has become standard approach, particularly prior to GC–olfactometry. The manual valve SAFE equipment, however, leads suboptimal yields and risk contamination volatile isolate with non-volatiles. We thus developed an automated (aSAFE) approach replacing electronically controlled pneumatic valve. aSAFE provides clearly higher than (mSAFE), notably extracts high in lipids for odorants comparably boiling points. Additionally, substantially reduces non-volatiles being transferred isolate. Full automatisation possible combining liquid nitrogen refill system as well endpoint recognition shut-off system.