Determination of trace levels of bromate in flour and related foods by ion chromatography.

In this paper, a method of determining trace levels of bromate in flour and related foods by ion chromatography with large volume injection has been proposed. The detection of bromate was performed with a suppressed conductivity detector after separation on an IonPac AS19 column with KOH as the gradient eluent. Parameters affecting the extraction efficiency of bromate, such as the flour-to-water ratio, extraction time, and temperature, were studied in detail. The optimized pretreatment process was then selected. By using the large volume injection technique, the solution detection limit was decreased to 0.5 microg/L. The linear range of this method was from 5 to 1000 microg/L, and the linear correlation coefficient was 0.9998. The method has been applied to the detection of bromate in flour and related foods, and different concentration levels of bromate were detected in various samples. The spiked recoveries ranged from 86 to 110%. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of the bromate peak height for the seven successive injections of the flour sample was 6.4%.