Abstract
The malic and citric acids that are added in sodium chloride to improve the taste of pickles havebeen ordinarily determined by gas chromatography, but this method is complicated and time consumlng.
A simple high performance liquid chromatographic method [HPLC] has been developed for thedetermination of these acids in sodium chloride samples. The proposed procedure was tested asfollows. About 5 g of a sodium chloride sample were dissolved in water and diluted to exactly 50ml. A 20μl aliquot of the sample solution was injected into the chromatograph after filtrationWith a Millipore filter (0.45μm). The HPLC separatiOn Was performed on a Shim Pack CLC-ODS column (150mm×6mm i. d.), using 10mmol phosphate buffer (pH 2.3) in the mobile phase at aflow rate of 1.0ml/min. The analyses were determined using an ultraviolet detector at 210nm. The standard solutions of malic and citric acids were treated by dissolving them in pure sodiumchloride in the same manner in which the sample was prepared. Linear calibration curves wereobtained for the range 0-200μg/ml for each acid.
The detection limits were approximately 30ng for malic acid and 10ng for citric acid.
