Abstract: A method was developed for simultaneous determination of seven food additives by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), such as tartrazine, amaranth, carmine, C.I. food yellow 3, benzoic acid, sorbic acid and vanillin. Isocraticelution was adopted in this method. Eclipse XDB-C18 (250mm × 4.6 mm, 5μm) was used as separation column, methanol, 0.02mol/ml ammonium acetate (pH6) and acetonitrile (volume ratio is 30:80:10) was used as mobile phase. Samples such as drinks, jelly, mustard and confiture were detected at 230 nm by UV detector. Baseline separation was achieved except for tartrazine. An analysis for each sample can be finished 11 min. Under these conditions, the linear range is 0.1～500μg/ml, with the linear correlation coefficient between 0.9975 and 0.9995, the average recovery was between 81.3% and 117.7%,and the relative standard deviation(RSD) was smaller than 6.2%(n=6), and the detection limit is 3～10 ng/ml. This method has high sensitivity and good reproducibility with the characters of simple operation and rapid determination. It is an effective method for determining food additives.

Key words: food additive, simultaneous determination, ultraviolet detector, high performance liquid chromatography