In this work, carbon dots (CDs) prepared by a one-step hydrothermal method were employed for the determination of quercetin in teas and beers. The fluorescence quenching of CDs was proportional to the concentration of quercetin. Under optimum experimental conditions, linear quenching was observed for quercetin in the range of 1.0 to 10 mg L-1 (F/F0 = (0.1511 ± 0.0075)[Q] + (0.8922 ± 0.0384), R2 = 0.9926), at room temperature, using 80 μL CDs and 0.1 mol L-1 Na2HPO4/NaOH buffer solution (pH 11.0). A limit of detection (3σ criterion) of 0.85 mg L-1, and a relative standard deviation of 0.21% (n = 3) for 4.0 mg L-1 quercetin solution was obtained. Addition and recovery tests with tea and beer samples were performed resulting in recoveries at the range between 80 and 118%. This procedure served successfully to determine quercetin in beer and tea samples presenting high sample throughput.

ABSTRACT A multicommuted flow procedure for the spectrophotometric determination of reducing sugars in wine has been developed. A dialysis unit was incorporated in the system to minimize matrix interferences and eliminate the colored compounds of the wine. The oxidation-reduction reaction in an alkaline medium between reducing sugars and the Cu2+-Neocuproine complex was employed. The compound formed was monitored at 460 nm. In the proposed procedure, there was a linear response between 0.25 and 4.0 g L-1 reducing sugars (y = (0.36 ± 0.02) + (0.31 ± 0.01) * x, R = 0.9975, n = 6), a coefficient of variance of 2.6% for a reducing sugar solution of 2.0 g L-1 (n = 7), a limit of detection estimated at 0.03 g L-1, reagent consumption per determination of 0.330, 0.128 and 0.160 mg for neocuproine, CuSO4 and NaOH, respectively. A sampling throughput of 45 determinations per hour was achieved. The proposed system was applied to wine samples and comparing the results with an AOAC official method no significant difference at a 95% confidence level.

The most important features of the CE-ICP hyphenation, as well as its advantages and drawbacks as a tool for speciation are discussed. The fundamental principles of capillary electrophoresis and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry are also presented. Some applications involving different designs proposed in the literature to couple CE and ICP system for elemental speciation are reviewed.