Simultaneous Determination of Six Preservatives in Beverage by HPLC

In this study, The aim is to establish the determination method for six preservatives of Benzoic acid, Sorbic acid and four para-hydroxybenzoic acid esters (methyl p-hydroxybenzoate, ethyl p-hydroxybenzoate, propyl p-hydroxybenzoate, butyl p-hydroxybenzoate) in beverage by high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) simultaneously. After protein precipitation, the sample was diluted by water and separated on a C18 column by a mobile phase consisting of ammonium acetate(0.02M) /methanol in gradient elution and detected at the wavelength of 238 nm. The results shows that The recovery of these six preservatives in the method was 93.2% to 103.8% with correlation coefficients from 0.9996 to 0.9999. The detection limit of these six preservatives was between 0.01g/kg and 0.03g/kg. The method developed is sensitive, simple, accurate and suitable for the determination of six preservatives in beverage.