Determination of saccharides in wastewater from the beverage industry by microdialysis sampling, microbore high performance anion exchange chromatography and integrated pulsed electrochemical detection

Abstract

An assay method for saccharides in wastewater from the brewing industry, based on microdialysis sampling, microbore high performance anion exchange chromatography (HPAEC) and integrated pulsed electrochemical detection (IPED) is presented. Brewery effluent consisting of wash waters from the syrup room, inlet to a storage septic tank and contents of a storage septic tank were collected and sampled using a microdialysis probe equipped with a polysulfone membrane having a 30 kDa cut-off. The pHs of the samples were 5.4, 3.5 and 6.8 for syrup room, inlet and septic tank respectively. The dialysates were injected on-line into a microbore HPAEC system and detected, at a gold electrode employing IPED. Qualitative analysis showed the wastewater to contain glucose, fructose and sucrose as the main saccharide components. Due to the varying pH of the samples, the elution order of the saccharides showed a dependency on pH. The results of this investigation indicate the versatility of an assay method that is based on microdialysis and a trap column as a method to clean up a complex sample before injection into a chromatographic system.