Electrochemical Behavior and the Determination of Furan in Beverage Samples Using Glassy Carbon Electrode

Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

1 Graduate Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

2 NFCRS, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, AEOI, P.O. Box 11365-3486, Tehran, Iran

3 Biotechnology Group School of chemical Engineering College of Engineering, University of Tehran P.o.Box:11155-4563,Tehran, Iran

4 University of Tehran, Aras International Campus, Aras, Iran

Abstract

Furan is a possible human carcinogen in many types of foods. A new and sensitive electro
analytical method for determination of furan has been developed and validated. The best condition for
electrochemical response was obtained with 0.1 M britton-rabinson buffer solution (pH=5) a glassy carbon
electrode (GCE) was used as the working electrode, a Ag/AgCl/ KCl(sat.) electrode served as the reference
electrode, and a platinum wire as the auxiliary electrode under the Differential Pulse Voltammetry (DPV)
mode. The peak current obtained from DPV was linearly dependent on the Furan concentration in the range
12–360 μM (0.81–24.5 ppm) with correlation coefficients of 0.999 and a limit of detection (LOD) of 3 μM
(0.2 ppm) and limit of quantification (LOQ) of 10 μM (0.68 ppm) were calculated, respectively. The values
of the electron-transfer coefficient (α) involved in the rate determining step calculated from the linear plots of Ep against ln (ν) in the pH range investigated were 0.8 confirming the irreversible nature of the oxidation peak. The reproducibility of the method was tested by analyzing 10 samples containing 30 μM of Furan. The RSD % of the method thus obtained was 3.0 % which showed excellent reproducibility for this developed methods.

Keywords