Rapid and sensitive determination of carbohydrates in foods using high temperature liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection

In the present work, an evaporative light scattering detector was used as a high-temperature liquid chromatography detector for the determination of carbohydrates. The compounds studied were glucose, fructose, galactose, sucrose, maltose, and lactose. The effect of column temperature on the retention times and detectability of these compounds was investigated. Column heating temperatures ranged from 25 to 175°C. The optimum temperature in terms of peak resolution and detectability with pure water as mobile phase and a liquid flow rate of 1 mL/min was 150°C as it allowed the separation of glucose and the three disaccharides here considered in less than 3 min. These conditions were employed for lactose determination in milk samples. Limits of quantification were between 2 and 4.7 mg/L. On the other hand, a temperature gradient was developed for the simultaneous determination of glucose, fructose, and sucrose in orange juices, due to coelution of monosaccharides at temperatures higher than 70°C, being limits of quantifications between 8.5 and 12 mg/L. The proposed hyphenation was successfully applied to different types of milk and different varieties of oranges and mandarins. Recoveries for spiked samples were close to 100% for all the studied analytes.