Determination of sorbate and benzoate in beverage samples by capillary electrophoresis—Optimization of the method with inspection of ionic mobilities

The aim of this study was to develop a fast capillary electrophoresis method for the determination of benzoate and sorbate ions in commercial beverages. In the method development the pH and constituents of the background electrolyte were selected using the effective mobility versus pH curves. As the high resolution obtained experimentally for sorbate and benzoate in the studies presented in the literature is not in agreement with that expected from the ionic mobility values published, a procedure to determine these values was carried out. The salicylate ion was used as the internal standard. The background electrolyte was composed of 25 mmol L−1 tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane and 12.5 mmol L−1 2-hydroxyisobutyric acid, at pH 8.1. Separation was conducted in a fused-silica capillary (32 cm total length and 8.5 cm effective length, 50 μm I.D.), with short-end injection configuration and direct UV detection at 200 nm for benzoate and salicylate and 254 nm for sorbate ions. The run time was only 28 s. A few figures of merit of the proposed method include: good linearity (R2 > 0.999), limit of detection of 0.9 and 0.3 mg L−1 for benzoate and sorbate, respectively, inter-day precision better than 2.7% (n = 9) and recovery in the range 97.9–105%. Beverage samples were prepared by simple dilution with deionized water (1:11, v/v). Concentrations in the range of 197–401 mg L−1 for benzoate and 28–144 mg L−1 for sorbate were found in soft drinks and tea.