Evaluation of peroxide value of olive oil and antioxidant activity by luminol chemiluminescence

Three procedures are developed and investigated for the simple and fast determination of peroxide value of olive oil by luminol chemiluminescence. The procedure using hemin as catalyst in carbonate alkaline solution allows the determination of hydrogen peroxide within the range 0.014–50 μM. The method can be used for the determination of peroxide value within the range 2.00–30.0 mequiv. O2/kg oil and results correlate very well (r2 = 0.99) with those of the official method. All reagents are aqueous solutions and olive oil is dissolved in acetone:ethanol mixed solution and, hence, the method is using minimal amounts of organic solvents and can be successfully applied to field analysis. Antioxidant activity of five common compounds found in natural products was determined by using luminol CL with Co(II) as EDTA complex as catalyst at pH 9.00.