Determination of Vitamin C in Foods Using the Iodine-Turbidimetric Method Combined with an Infrared Camera

Abstract

A novel method was proposed for the determination of vitamin C (VC) using an infrared camera combined with the iodine-turbidimetric method. Based on the redox between VC and iodine, the residual iodine was measured using the turbidimetric method with an infrared camera to obtain VC content. The light emitted by the infrared light-emitting diode (LED) was absorbed and scattered when it penetrated the residual iodine suspension. The transmitted light was captured by the infrared camera to form a digital image and the responding color components and grayscale values were obtained. The obtained color components and log-grayscale were fitted to the VC concentration, and the fitted relation expressions were used to measure the unknown VC solution. A VC measuring device equipped with an infrared camera and processing software was designed to obtain the color components corresponding to the images of the iodine suspensions. Compared with the spectrophotometry, the method based on the color component of brightness had a higher accuracy for measuring the VC standard solution. For VC measurements in tomatoes, nectarines, and VC tablets, our proposed method was highly consistent with spectrophotometry. Therefore, this method could potentially be implemented in the determination of VC in fruits and tablets, or other foods.