Synthetic food colorants Selectivity Summary

A high-performance apillary electrophoresis method with diode-array detection has been developed for analysis of synthetic food colorants. The influence of buffer composition on the separation of the food color-ants was examined, as were the effects of ~-, 13- and 7-c-yclodextrins on analyte migration behavior. Eight food colorants were completely separated within 10 min us-ing pH 9.5 borax- NaOH buffer containing 5 mM [3-cyclodextrin. Experimental results indicate that the relative standard eviations of analyte migration times were < 0.88 % under the optimized separation condition. Correlation coefficients of the linear calibration plots of the analytes exceeded 0.998. The method was suitable for determination of the quantities of synthetic food col-orants in ice cream bars and fruit soda drinks