[Determination of antioxidants BHT,BHA and PG in food with high performance liquid chromatography]

An accurate and rapid method for simultaneous determination of antioxidants butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and propyl gallate (PG) in food by reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography was established. The sample was extracted with hexane. Being filtrated and dried by N2, the residues in evaporator was dissolved in a certain amount of water-C2H5OH (1:4, V/V) and filtered with 0.5 micron of filter membrane for HPLC analysis. The chromatographic conditions were Radial-PAK C12 column, methanol-water (92:8, V/V) mobile phase adjusted to pH = 3 with phosphoric acid and UV-280 nm detector. By using external standard method the analytical results showed that the coefficients of variation of PG,BHA and BHT were 0.61, 0.08 and 1.44 respectively, linear correlation coefficients were more than 0.999 and recoveries were 92%-98% (n = 6). The lowest detection limit was 0.5 mg/L.