High Performance Liquid Chromatographic Determination of Fructose, Glucose, and Sucrose in Molasses

Fructose, glucose, and sucrose were determined quantitatively in molasses by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) using maltose as an internal standard. After a simple cleanup procedure, chromatographic separation required less than 20 min for the 17 molasses samples. HPLC gave lower results for reducing sugars (fructose plus glucose) and for sucrose by an average of 3.9 and 1.2%, respectively, when compared to results obtained by classical methods. The lower values are believed to result from elimination of interfering substances by this method. The values probably reflect more accurately the true composition of the molasses. Repetitive injections of a standard solution indicated a coefficient of variation of 2.0% for fructose and glucose and of 2.2% for sucrose.