Aspartame was extracted from flavoured milk using SPE (Arora et al., 2013), however choice of eluent and eluent volume were optimized for the SPE procedure for neotame. Standard neotame solution (2 ml, 10 mg/l) was introduced into the cartridge. Acetonitrile and methanol were used to elute neotame and it was observed that neotame recovery was better with the use of methanol as an eluent as compared to acetonitrile. The cartridge was washed with 10 ml of water to remove the unbound impurities; this washing did not affect the bound neotame in the cartridge.
To optimize the amount of eluent needed for efficient elution, different amounts of methanol 1, 2 and 3 ml were used to elute the bound neotame and the eluates were analyzed for neotame recovery. It was observed that 3 ml methanol was sufficient to obtain a high recovery of sweetener and its degradation product.