Carbitol as adulterant in menthol; analytical method for quantitative analysis of adulteration

• Main Authors: Indrajit Sen, Deepak Shrivastava, Manjeet Aggarwal, Rakesh Kumar Khandal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AIMS Press 2020-05-01
• Series: AIMS Agriculture and Food
• Subjects: menthol; carbitol; gc-ms
• Online Access: https://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/agrfood.2020.1.129/fulltext.html

India is the largest exporter of menthol, a highly valued natural volatile compound obtained from peppermint. However, natural plant menthol, which often found to be adulterated. The standard methods used for quantitative analysis of menthol are not good enough to identify certain adulterants. One of the commonly used adulterants in menthol is found to be carbitol which is nothing but diethylene glycol monoethyl ether or 2-(2-Ethoxyethoxy) ethanol. This adulterant cannot be detected properly with the gas chromatography method as prescribed in the IS (Indian Standards) 3134:1992 method for this purpose. The present paper deals with the development of a method using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) which is easy and simple to determine adulteration of carbitol in menthol. It has been demonstrated that by using this method developed here can easily detect the presence of carbitol in menthol at a level as low as 1 μg/mL with linearity correlation coefficient >0.999 for the concentration range of 5.0 to 100 μg/mL. This method is found to be robust and easy to adapt.