Rapid analysis of benzoic acid and vitamin C in beverages by paper spray mass spectrometry

A paper spray mass spectrometry (PS-MS) method has been developed for the rapid quantification of benzoic acid (BA) and vitamin C (VC) in beverages. Using BA-d5 as an internal standard (IS) to analyze BA and VC, the calibration curves ranged from 0.3 to 100 μg/mL for BA and 1 to 100 μg/mL for VC, the linearity was 0.9996 for BA and 0.9973 for VC. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantitation (LOQs) were 0.1 μg/mL and 0.3 μg/mL for BA, 0.3 μg/mL and 1 μg/mL for VC, respectively. The recovery ranged from 91.1 to 106.7% for BA, 92.6 to 108.2% for VC. Compared with HPLC, there is no substantial difference in the quantification of BA and VC in samples, the accuracy was 95.7-102.2%, and the run time is far less than that of the HPLC method. The results indicated that PS-MS is a rapid, environmentally friendly and high-throughput method for the quantification of BA and VC.