Lactose Analyzer
Lactose analysis has become very important in recent decades due to increased population suffering from intolerance. It has now been established, as recommended by the European Food Safety Authority, that products labeled as "lactose-free" must contain less than 0.01% (100 ppm) of lactose. This limit will tend to be more restrictive in the future, so it is important to develop lactose analysis techniques of few ppm levels.
In our laboratories lactose analysis is performed by HPLC-PAD-EC technique, which combines liquid chromatography with amperometric detection pulse.The HPLC equipment we use is an Agilent 1260 Infinity Series and is composed of a quaternary pump and a high precision autosampler. The electrochemical detector is a Decade Elite ANTEC which contains an electrochemical cell with gold electrode. Such technique can detect lactose levels between 100 ppm to levels below 0.1 ppm with high sensitivity and accuracy.
