Determination of Diacetyl in Beer by a Precolumn Derivatization-HPLC-UV Method Using 4-(2,3-Dimethyl-6-quinoxalinyl)-1,2-benzenediamine as a Derivatizing Reagent.

Diacetyl is an important flavoring compound in many foods, especially in beer. In the present study, we developed and validated a new precolumn derivatization HPLC-UV method for the determination of diacetyl using 4-(2,3-dimethyl-6-quinoxalinyl)-1,2-benzenediamine as a novel derivatizing reagent. After derivatization with the reagent at a pH value 4.0 at ambient temperature for 10 min, diacetyl was analyzed on an ODS column and detected at 254 nm. The results show that the correlation coefficient of the method is 0.9991 in the range of 0.10 to 100.0 μM diacetyl, and the limit of detection is 0.02 μM. The method was further evaluated in the analysis of beer samples with the recoveries ranging from 94.4 to 102.6% and RSDs from 1.36 to 3.33%. The concentrations of diacetyl in 8 beer samples were determined in the range of 0.19 to 0.42 μM. The method established in this study may be well suitable for the determination of diacetyl in beer.