Karl Fischer Titration as an Alternative Method for Determining the Water Content of Cloves

The current reference method to determine the water content of cloves is azeotropic distillation with nonpolar solvents as carriers. Such analyses take a long time and results are not easily reproducible. A variation of the more rapid Karl Fischer method, titration in a boiling working medium, was therefore investigated as an alternative method to determine the water content of cloves. The results correlate well with those obtained by azeotropic distillation, with no significant differences between the results. The Karl Fischer results show a much lower scattering of values, and determination times are considerably shorter.