Use of 2-Naphthalenethiol for Derivatization and Determination of Acrylamide in Potato Crisps by High-Performance Liquid Chromatographic with Fluorescence Detection

The present study proposes an alternative analytical method for the determination of acrylamide in potato chips, using 2-naphthalenethiol as derivatization reagent followed by a HPLC separation with fluorescence detection to be used as a routine analytical procedure in the potato chip industry. The proposed method requires a relatively low-cost instrumentation compared to the mass spectrometry-based methods or other sample cleanup techniques. The optimal conditions for the derivatization process were a reaction temperature of 90 degrees C, reaction time of 40 min, and a concentration of 7.3 mM of 2-naphthalenethiol. The sample preparation consisted only in an aqueous extraction and a defatting step with hexane. The limit of detection obtained was 129.2 mu g kg(-1). The acrylamide content of nine commercial potato chip samples was found in the interval of 269.21-1405.30 mu g kg(-1).