Abstrakt
The objective of the study was to develop a new method for the determination of the total
content of vitamin C and dehydroascorbic acid in food, based on the technique of differential pulse
voltammetry with the use of a boron-doped diamond electrode modified with mercury film. A com-
parison was made between the results obtained with the developed method and a proposed reference
method based on high-performance liquid chromatography with spectrophotometric detection. The
reduction of dehydroascorbic acid was performed with the use of tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine.
The interference caused by the presence of tris(2-carboxyethyl)phosphine during the voltammetric
determination of ascorbic acid was effectively eliminated through a reaction with N-ethylmaleimide.
The conducted validation of the voltammetric method indicated that correct results of analysis of the
total content of vitamin C and ascorbic acid were obtained. Analysis of the content of dehydroascorbic
acid was imprecise due to the application of the differential method. The results of the analyses and
the determined validation parameters of the developed method are characterised by a high degree of
conformance with the results obtained with the chromatographic reference method, which indicates
the equivalence of the two methods.