CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Sudan dyes are a family of synthetic azo dyes that are widely used for colouring plastics and other synthetic materials. In addition, Sudan dyes have been found in food such as spices, to maintain their intense red?orange colour for commercial purposes. Moreover, some authors have reported their presence in soft drinks and wastewater effluents [1]. Owing to their property to generate metabolites that are converted into active mutagens and carcinogens compounds, Sudan dyes are classified as category 3 carcinogens and are banned worldwide [2].Sequential injection chromatography (SIC) was introduced by ?atínský et al. by coupling a low-resistance monolithic column separation column into a conventional sequential injection analysis (SIA) system [3]. By this way, the chromatographic separation of analytes can be performed in a low-pressure and simple flow system, with low reagents and solvent consumption, high versatility and higher sample throughput comparing to HPLC methodologies.In this work, the chromatographic separation of Sudan dyes (I, II, III, IV and Para Red) was performed on a Flow Analysis Injection (FIA) system coupled to Chromolith Flash RP-18e, 25x4.6 mm monolithic column, protected by a guard column (5 mm×4.6 mm) of the same type. The physical and chemical variables of the FIA system were studied. The separation was achieved by isocratic elution, using a mobile phase of acetonitrile/water (80:20, v/v) at a flow rate of 0.45 mL min-1. The injected volume of the sample was 10 μL. The detection was performed in a flow-cell located in the holder of a spectrophotometer equipped with a diode array detector. In order to resolve overlapping peaks from some analytes and increase the sample throughput chemometric treatment was used.