Simultaneous separation and determination of organic acids in blueberry juices by capillary electrophoresis- electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

A sensitive and expeditious capillary electrophoresis-electrospray ionization mass spectrometry(CE-ESIMS) method for the separation, identification and determination of succinic, citric, salicylic, malic, benzoic, sorbic, ascorbic, and tartaric acid in blueberry juices has been developed. In order to obtain the analytical separation, CE-MS interface parameters(e.g., buffer pH and composition, sheath liquid and gas flow rates, sheath liquid composition, electrospray voltage, etc.) were carefully optimized. Eight organic acids were baseline separated in 8 min under optimum experimental conditions. The precisions for eight replicate separations of a standard mixture solution were 2.54-4.12 % for peak area and 0.85-2.12 % for migration time respectively. The linear ranges were 10.0-1000.0, 8.0-1000.0, 13.0-1000.0, 6.0-1000.0, 9.0-1000.0, 3.2-600.0, 6.0-1000.0 and 18.0-1000.0 μg/L for succinic, citric, salicylic, malic, benzoic, sorbic, ascorbic, and tartaric acid with detection limits of 2.5, 2.0, 3.4, 1.5, 2.2, 0.8, 1.5, 4.5 μg/L, respectively. The average recoveries of the eight components were between 86.8 and 99.8 % with RSDs of 1.8-5.3 %. The proposed method was applied to the simultaneous analysis of eight analytes in Blueberry Juice samples with satisfactory results.