Determination of neotame in non-alcoholic beverage by capillary zone electrophoresis

BACKGROUND Neotame (NEO) is a new artificial sweetener approved as a food additive in many countries. The present method for the determination of NEO in various foodstuffs is high‐performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). There are no reports on the determination of NEO in foods by capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE). Therefore a simple and rapid method to determine NEO is desired for quality control. RESULTS A CZE method combined with solid phase extraction was developed for the determination of NEO in non‐alcoholic beverage. The optimum separation conditions obtained were 20 mmol L−1 sodium borate buffer, pH 8, 25 kV applied voltage, 5 s hydrodynamic injection at 30 mbar and ultraviolet detection at 191 nm. The calibration curve showed good linearity (R2= 1.000) in the range 0.5–100 µg mL−1, and the limit of detection was 0.118 µg mL−1. The method was successfully applied to the determination of NEO in two kinds of beverage with migration time less than 5 min, relative standard deviation (n = 3) less than 2% and recoveries ranging from 90 to 95%. CONCLUSION The proposed CZE method has the advantages of shorter analysis time and lower cost compared with HPLC, indicating that it may be a good alternative to the HPLC method. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry