A High-performance Liquid Chromatography-evaporative Light Scattering Detection-based Quantitative Analytical Method for Polyvinyl Alcohol in Food Supplements with Pyrolysis-gas Chromatography/mass Spectrometry-based Verification

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) is extensively used in agricultural, pharmaceutical, textile, and food industries. A new high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with evaporative light scattering detection (ELSD) was developed for the quantitative analysis of PVOH products. Pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) was employed for method verification. The HPLC-ELSD method exhibited acceptable linearity (R > 0.99), with limits of detection and quantitation of 19.43 and 58.88 μg/mL, respectively. Accuracies of 91.16-102.30% were estimated based on recoveries of the intra- and inter-day tests of PVOH. Repeatability and intermediate precision (%RSD) of 1.23-4.45 and 2.18-6.95, respectively, were obtained. The presence of PVOH in the HPLC peaks was further verified using typical indicators of PVOH in Py-GC/MS analysis, such as acetaldehyde, 2,5-dihydrofuran, benzaldehyde, and crotonaldehyde. This novel HPLC method with Py-GC/MS-based verification can be successfully applied for analyzing PVOH in dietary supplement tablets.