QUANTITATION OF ORGANIC-ACIDS IN SUGAR REFINERY JUICES WITH CAPILLARYZONE ELECTROPHORESIS AND INDIRECT UV DETECTION

During sugar refinement, monitoring of organic acids such as formate, tartrate, succinate, malate, glycolate and acetate in the process ''ju ices'' is important for process control. Matrix effects can lead to pr oblems in conventional chromatographic ion analysis of these solutions . Capillary zone electrophoresis, with indirect UV detection, has been shown to be a good alternative, requiring almost no sample preparatio n, other than dilution, and with fast analysis time (less than 7 min). A co-elution problem for the formate-tartrate pair could be solved by adding small amounts of bivalent metal ions to the electrophoresis bu ffer. Quantitative analyses of the organic acids in the juices from be et sugar production and from the processing of a hydrolysed chicory ro ot extract (Cichorium intybus) are reported.