Simultaneous Detection of Azodicarbonamide and the Metabolic Product Semicarbazide in Flour by Capillary Electrophoresis

In the present work, capillary electrophoresis (CE) was used for the first time for the simultaneous analysis of azodicarbonamide (ADA) and semicarbazide (SEM), and the capillary electrophoresis separation conditions, extraction agents, and derivatization conditions were investigated. In 20 mmol L−1 sodium tetraborate, 30 mmol L−1 β-cyclodextrin (β-CD), 17 % isopropanol (v/v), and 25 mmol L−1 sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) running buffer, ADA and SEM previously derivatized with 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (FMOC) were separated in less than 25 min with good sensitivity. The linear ranges were 8.3 × 10−4∼6.6 × 10−2 mmol L−1 and 1.9 × 10−3∼3.4 × 10−2 mmol L−1, and detection limits (S/N = 10) were 0.5 and 0.15 mg kg−1 for ADA and SEM, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied for the simultaneous analysis of ADA and SEM in five flour samples with satisfactory recovery data from 88.0 to 93.0 % for ADA and 98.0 to 106.0 % for SEM, indicating the valuable potential application of this method for food analysis.