Abstract
Box-Behnken design was applied to optimize high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) conditions for the simultaneous determination of potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, carmoisine, allura red, ponceau 4R, and caffeine in commercial soft drinks. The experimental variables chosen were pH (6.0–7.0), flow rate (1.0–1.4 mL/min), and mobile phase ratio (85–95% acetate buffer). Resolution values of all peak pairs were used as a response. Stationary phase was Inertsil OctaDecylSilane- (ODS-) 3V reverse phase column (250 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm) dimensions. The detection was performed at 230 nm. Optimal values were found 6.0 pH, 1.0 mL/min flow rate, and 95% mobile phase ratio for the method which was validated by calculating the linearity (r 2 > 0.9962), accuracy (recoveries ≥ 95.75%), precision (intraday variation ≤ 1.923%, interday variation ≤ 1.950%), limits of detection (LODs), and limits of quantification (LOQs) parameters. LODs and LOQs for analytes were in the range of 0.10–0.19 μg/mL and 0.33–0.63 μg/mL, respectively. The proposed method was applied successfully for the simultaneous determination of the mixtures of five food additives and caffeine in soft drinks.
Highlights
Food additives are widely used in foodstuffs to prevent from spoilage and improve color, flavor, and texture of foods
Various analytical methods have been reported for the simultaneous determination synthetic food additives, such as thin layer chromatography [4], UV-visible spectrophotometry [5, 6], voltammetry [7, 8], differential pulse polarography [9], capillary electrophoresis [10], high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-diode array detectors (DADs) [11,12,13,14], HPLCMS [15], and HPLC-MS-MS [16, 17]
The linearity of the HPLC method for the determination of five food additives and caffeine was evaluated in a concentration range of 2–10 μg/mL for carmoisine, allura red, and ponceau 4R and 5–25 μg/mL for potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and caffeine covering the normal range of concentrations obtained when analyzing soft drinks
Summary
Food additives are widely used in foodstuffs to prevent from spoilage and improve color, flavor, and texture of foods. Development of effective chromatographic separation method involves judicious selection of experimental conditions that is suitable for the separation of interested components at an adequate resolution with reasonable run time. In this regard, experimental design is a useful tool to simplify the laborious work [18]. A new RP-HPLC method was developed, using experimental design, for simultaneous determination of five synthetic food additives in soft drinks, including three synthetic colorants (carmoisine, allura red, and ponceau 4R), two preservatives (potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate), and caffeine. The optimized and validated method was successfully applied to some commercial soft drinks containing potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, carmoisine, allura red, ponceau 4R, and caffeine
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