Electrochemical Behavior and the Determination of Furan in Beverage Samples Using Glassy Carbon Electrode

Furan is a possible human carcinogen in many types of foods. A new and sensitive electro analytical method for determination of furan has been developed and validated. The best condition for electrochemical response was obtained with 0.1 M britton-rabinson buffer solution (pH=5) a glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was used as the working electrode, a Ag/AgCl/ KCl(sat.) electrode served as the reference electrode, and a platinum wire as the auxiliary electrode under the Differential Pulse Voltammetry (DPV) mode. The peak current obtained from DPV was linearly dependent on the Furan concentration in the range 12-360 mu M (0.81-24.5 ppm) with correlation coefficients of 0.999 and a limit of detection (LOD) of 3 mu M (0.2 ppm) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of 10 mu M (0.68 ppm) were calculated, respectively. The values of the electron-transfer coefficient ( alpha ) involved in the rate determining step calculated from the linear plots of Ep against In (v) in the pH range investigated were 0.8 confirming the irreversible nature of the oxidation peak. The reproducibility of the method was tested by analyzing 10 samples containing 30 mu M of Furan. The RSD % of the method thus obtained was 3.0 % which showed excellent reproducibility for this developed methods.