Studies of surfactants effect on riboflavin fluorescence and its determination in commercial food products and vitamin tablets

A simple and economical fluorometer using blue LEDs excitation sources and simple PMT detection had been built, assembled, optimized, and employed for measurement of fluorescence from riboflavin (vitamin B2). Surfactants have been known to enhance the intensity of fluorescence of fluorescent compounds. Fluorescence analysis of riboflavin in the presence of various anionic, cationic, and nonionic surfactants was also conducted to determine if they could improve analysis. However, the surfactants employed did not seem to have any meaningful enhancement; in fact, some actually diminished the fluorescence intensity of riboflavin. The procedure was linear for riboflavin from 0.01 to 2.5 mug/mL. Reproducibility expressed as relative standard deviation was about 2%. The recoveries obtained range from 91.3% to 100.21% for the samples determined. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of riboflavin in commercial vitamin tablets and cereal products. The results obtained were consistent with expected values as provided by the manufacturers. The method is simple, sensitive, economical, and rapid.