Determination of caffeine in dietary supplements by miniaturized portable liquid chromatography

•Portable liquid chromatography was tested for caffeine in dietary supplements.•Benchtop capillary and nano chromatography were used as reference methods.•Although less sensitive, portable nano liquid chromatography was faster and simpler.•Examples of application to different dietary supplements are shown.•Contents of caffeine found ranged from 7 to 1.5 mg per g of sample. In this study three miniaturized liquid chromatography (LC) instruments have been evaluated and compared for the analysis of caffeine in dietary supplements, namely a benchtop capillary LC (capLC) system, a benchtop nano LC (nanoLC)system and a portable LC system. Commercial products derived from different sources of caffeine have been analyzed. Under optimized conditions, the methods based on benchtop systems were superior in terms of sensitivity. The limits of detection (LODs) found with the capLC and nanoLC systems were 0.01 and 0.003 µg mL−1, respectively, whereas the LOD obtained with the portable LC instrument was of 1 µg mL−1. The portable LC-based method was superior in terms of simplicity and throughput (total analysis time < 15 min). On the basis of the results obtained, a new method for the rapid measurement of caffeine in dietary supplements by portable miniaturized LC is presented. This method provided good linearity within the 1–20 µg mL−1 interval, and it allowed the quantification of caffeine even in products derived from decaffeinated green coffee extracts. The contents of caffeine found with the proposed portable LC method in the real samples analyzed ranged from 1.38 to 7 mg per gram of product, which were values statistically equivalent to those found with the benchtop capLC and nanoLC methods, being the precision, expressed as relative standard deviation (RDS), of 2 -14% (n = 3). The proposed portable LC based method can be used as a simple and rapid alternative to estimate the quality, effectiveness and safety of dietary supplements, regarding their caffeine content.