Simultaneous determination of organic acids in beverages by capillary zone electrophoresis

A rapid, reliable and simple capillary zone electrophoresis method for the determination of organic acids in beverages was developed. The complete separation of oxalic, formic, tartaric, malic, succinic, maleic, glutaric, pyruvic, acetic, lactic, citric, butyric, benzoic, sorbic, ascorbic and gluconic acids can be achieved in less than 3.5 min with a simple electrolyte composed by phosphate as the carrier buffer (7.5 mM NaH2PO4 and 2.5 mM Na2HPO4), 2.5 mM TTAOH as electroosmotic flow modifier and 0.24 mM CaCl2 as selectivity modifier, adjusting the pH at 6.40 constant value. Injection was performed in hydrodynamic mode (30 s) and the detection mode was UV direct at 185 nm. The running voltage was −25 kV at thermostated temperature of 25 °C. The method developed has been applied to several beverage samples with only a simple dilution and filtration treatment of the sample. The proposed method is fast because the separation time decrease two, four or, even, six times the separation times of the previous reported CZE methods. It is also simple and cheap due to a low consumption of chemicals and samples. These reasons permit it to be considered adequate for routine analysis of organic acids in beverage samples.