Journal des techniques analytiques et bioanalytiques

Abstrait

Simple and Fast Determination of Ammonia in Tobacco

Eugene Jansen, Piet Beekhof, Johannes Cremers and Reinskje Talhout

The presence of ammonia in tobacco is an important factor for the absorption of nicotine, and for product taste. The determination of ammonia in tobacco is usually performed by ion chromatography with conductivity detection devices.

Here a new method is presented to measure the concentration of ammonia in tobacco based on an automated enzymatic method. This method is easy to perform and can be used on routine clinical analyzers. The enzymatic ammonia determination showed an intra-assay and inter-assay variation of 4-7 and 5-8%, respectively as determined with 3 brands of cigarettes. A comparison with the established HPLC-IC method gave similar results with respect to both concentrations in cigarettes and the reproducibility of the method. In one working day 50-60 samples of cigarettes or tobacco can be processed and analyzed.