Determination of eight high-intensity sweeteners in alcohol beverages by HPLC-MS/MS

A HPLC-MS/MS method for the determination of acesulfame-K, saccharin, cyclamate, notate, aspartame, all-time, stevioside and sucralose in alcohol beverages has been developed. The HPLC separation was carried out on a ZORBAX SB-C18 column (4.6mm×50mm, 1.8 µm). The results demonstrated that the separation can be completed by gradient elution with 0.1% formic acid and 0.1% formic acid acetonitrile as the mobile phase. The column temperature was kept at 30°C. When the analyses were detected by ESI-MS/MS under multiple reaction monitoring mode, the calibration curves showed good linearity in the concentration range of 0.01 mg/L -1 mg/L for sweeteners. The correlation coefficients (r2) of the calibration curve were >0.9997. The limits of quantification of the eight sweeteners were 0.002 mg/L -0.0035 mg/L. The obtained recoveries at three tested concentration levels varied from 83.5% to 100.42%, with relative standard deviations lower than 2.33 %. The proposed method has been successfully applied to the determination of the eight sweeteners in beers, wine and white spirits.