Assay of reducing sugars in beverages, wines, honey and marmalades using potentiometric stripping analysis (PSA)

Summary

In the proposed method excess of Soxhlet reagent is added to the sugar standard solutions and the unknown samples; the reduction of Cu(II) to Cu₂O is taking place by heating at constant temperature for a specified time. Unreduced copper in the supernatant solution or reduced copper in the Cu₂O precipitate is determined by PSA. The method offers the following advantages for the determination of reducing sugars in soft drinks, wines, spirituous liquors, honey, marmalades etc.: 1) high sensitivity, due to the PSA-technique; 2) applicability to coloured and turbid samples where the official methods cannot be applied without preceding treatment of the sample; 3) good agreement with standard methods for the assay of sugars.