Determination of sodium dioctylsulfosuccinate in dry beverage bases by liquid chromatography with post-column ion-pair extraction and absorbance detection.

Sodium dioctylsulfosuccinate (DSS) is extracted as an ion pair with methylene blue from finished drinks prepared from dry beverage bases. The complex is quantitatively determined colorimetrically in chloroform-acetone solution by a standard procedure. DSS is specifically identified by analyzing an aliquot of the extract by reverse phase liquid chromatography (LC). The compound is detected by using a simple post-column dynamic extraction system in which DSS is extracted from the aqueous mobile phase into chloroform as a methylene blue ion pair. The chloroform phase passes through the absorbance detector for measurement at 546 nm (filter detector). The absolute detection limit was 5-10 ng DSS, while in beverage bases as low as 0.1 microgram/g was detected. Extraction of the beverage bases with mobile phase followed by filtration and direct LC analysis with the described system was also successful, although not evaluated on a routine basis.