Determination of aspartame used as sweetener in various food samples by HPLC method

Aspartame is a widely used artificial sweetener due to its high performance and low cost, despite having various health side effects. In this study, a green, eco-friendly, cheap, fast, and robust HPLC-ELSD method was developed and validated for the determination of aspartame in various beverages and candies. The separation process was performed isocratically on a C18 column (4.6 x 150mm, 3.5 µm), with the mobile phase composed of a (water:EtOH):(80:20, v/v) mixture, which served as green solvents, and a flow rate of 1.00 mL min-1. The column oven temperature was set to 30 °C, and the drift tube temperature of the ELSD was adjusted to 50 ºC. The injection volume was 10 µL. In the HPLC-ELSD system, the Gain value was set to 7, and the Filter value was set to 10. The developed HPLC-ELSD method achieved LOD and LOQ values of 0.33 and 0.99 respectively, with recovery rates ranging from 98.67% to 102.88%. The precision of the method, expressed as RSD%, was below 1%. The total elution time using isocratic elution was 8 min. In the HPLC-ELSD method, the N2 gas pressure was adjusted to 350 kPa. The HPLC-ELSD method allowed for simultaneous determination of aspartame within 8 min using only 6.4 mL of water and 1.6 mL of ethanol. This study demonstrates that the developed HPLC-ELSD method can be used for routine analysis in the food industry.