A simple fabrication of portable diffuse reflectometer for simultaneous analysis of common food dyes

A simple and low cost reflectometer for resolving binary and ternary mixtures of some food dyes is described. The proposed device uses an array of five light emitting diodes (LEDs) arranged in spherical mode as light source, is combined with a light dependent resistor (LDR) in center, as a sensor. The described method was applied for the determination of Tartrazine, Quinoline Yellow, Sunset Yellow, Carmoisine, and Brilliant Blue in synthetic mixtures as well as commercial food product samples. The method was validated against a standard HPLC method. The results obtained employing the proposed method were in a good agreement with those of HPLC method, indicating that the method is accurate, precise, reproducible, and could be utilized directly to the routine analysis of the food samples.