Assay of melamine in milk products with a pH-mediated stacking technique in capillary electrophoresis

A pH-mediated stacking method in capillary electrophoresis as an assay for low concentrations of melamine in milk products was established. Real samples were treated with acetone and sodium acetate and injected directly after centrifugation and filtration. Several experimental factors, such as buffer pH, buffer concentration, sample matrix, injection/sweeping ratio, sweeping time/voltages, separation voltages, as well as sample pretreatment, which affected stacking and separation, were investigated and optimized. Under the selected condition, a low LOD of 0.01 μmol/L (S/N = 5) and a wide range of linearity of 0.01∼1.0 μmol/L could be easily achieved with a good reproducibility (RSDs < 5.8% for both migration time and peak area) and an acceptable recovery of 94.0∼103.2% (for milk, infant formula, yogurt, and milk products). The proposed method was suitable for routine assay of melamine in real milk samples.