Simultaneous determination of ascorbic acid and caffeine in commercial soft drinks using reversed-phase ultraperformance liquid chromatography

•A new RP-UPLC method was developed for the quantification of ascorbic acid and caffeine in 11 different commercial drinks.•The proposed RP-UPLC method is a very useful technique, giving reliable, precise, and accurate results.•The RP-UPLC approach can be applied to the analysis of drinks with short runtime and low solvent consumption.

A new reversed-phase ultraperformance liquid chromatography method with a photodiode array detector was developed for the quantification of ascorbic acid (AA) and caffeine (CAF) in 11 different commercial drinks consisting of one energy drink and 10 ice tea drinks. Separation of the analyzed AA and CAF with an internal standard, caffeic acid, was performed on a Waters BEH C18 column (100 mm × 2.1 mm, 1.7 μm i.d.), using a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile and 0.2M H3PO4 (11:89, v/v) with a flow rate of 0.25 mL/min and an injection volume of 1.0 μL. Calibration graphs for AA and CAF were computed from the peak area ratio of AA/internal standard and CAF/internal standard detected at 244.0 nm and 273.6 nm, respectively. The developed reversed-phase ultraperformance liquid chromatography method was validated by analyzing standard addition samples. The proposed reversed-phase ultraperformance liquid chromatography method gave us successful results for the quantitative analysis of commercial drinks containing AA and CAF substances.

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