OPTIMIZATION OF A HPLC ANALYSIS METHOD FOR TAURINE AND CAFFEINE IN ENERGY DRINKS

Abstract

This paper presents the optimization of a rapid, inexpensive, reliable and selective isocratic high performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) method for the simultaneous determination of caffeine and taurine in energy drinks with two common detectors in series: evaporating light scattering detector (ELSD) and an ultraviolet (UV) detector. Satisfactory analysis results were obtained on an Astec apHera NH2 column using methanol/water (30:70 v/v) as mobile phase. The optimized method was used for the analysis of commercial energy drinks containing large amounts of carbohydrates (100 g·L-1) and considerably lower amounts of taurine and caffeine (4 and 0.6 g·L-1, respectively). The advantages of this method consist of its lack of preliminary samples treatment and also the fact that basic LC instrumentation was employed.

Keywords

• Caffeine
• Energy Drink
• HPLC
• Taurine