Simple and fast PO-CL method for the evaluation of antioxidant capacity of hydrophilic and hydrophobic antioxidants

•Antioxidant activity of different hydrophobic and hydrophilic antioxidants was determined.•Antioxidant activity of the soybean oil, sunflower oil and honey samples was determined.•The method is free of oxidant and quenching interferences.•The method is simple, fast and cheap.

A simple and fast procedure is described for evaluating the antioxidant activity of hydrophilic and hydrophobic compounds by using the peroxyoxalate-chemiluminescence (PO-CL) reaction of Bis(2,4,6-trichlorophenyl) oxalate (TCPO) with hydrogen peroxide in the presence of di(tert-butyl)2-(tert-butylamino)-5-[(E)-2-phenyl-1-ethenyl]3,4-furandicarboxylate as a highly fluorescent fluorophore. The IC50 values of the well-known antioxidants were calculated and the results were expressed as gallic equivalent antioxidant capacity (GEAC). It was found that the proposed method is free of physical quenching and oxidant interference, for this reason, proposed method is able to determine the accurate scavenging activity of the antioxidants to the free radicals. Finally, the proposed method was applied to the evaluation of antioxidant activity of complex real samples such as soybean oil and sunflower oil (as hydrophobic samples) and honey (as hydrophilic sample). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that total antioxidant activity can be determined directly in soybean oil, sunflower oil and honey (not in their extracts) using PO-CL reactions.

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