Simultaneous determination of some artificial sweeteners in ternary formulations by FT-IR and EI-MS

Artificial sweeteners are widely used in food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries all over the world. In this study some non-nutritive sweeteners such as aspartame, acesulfame-K, sodium cyclamate and sodium saccharin were simultaneously determined in ternary mixtures using FT-IR and EI-MS measurements. FT-IR method is based on direct measurements of the peak height values and area centered on 1736 cm⁻¹, 836 cm⁻¹, 2854 cm⁻¹ and 1050 cm⁻¹ for aspartame, acesulfame-K, sodium cyclamate and sodium saccharin, respectively. Mass spectrometry determinations show the characteristic peaks at m/z 91 and 262 for aspartame,m/z 43 and 163 acesulfame-K,m/z 83 and 97 for sodium cyclamate andm/z 104 and 183 for sodium saccharin. The results obtained by EI-MS in different formulations are in agreement with the FT-IR ones and provide also essential data concerning the purity grade of the components. It is concluded that FT-IR and EI-MS procedures developed in this work represent a fast, sensitive and low cost alternative in the quality control of such sweeteners in different ternary formulations.