Phenol-Sulfuric Acid Analysis Essay

The results of the phenol-sulfuric acid analysis conducted in this experiment suggest that the data acquired was relatively precise but inaccurate with respect to the given carbohydrate concentrations of the soda and Gatorade samples. Using a standard curve generated from a glucose solution with a known concentration, the carbohydrate concentration of the samples was determined (in terms of glucose) and a low coefficient of variation was calculated. However, a high percent relative error was apparent in the analysis of both samples. This may have been due to the fact that the analysis was conducted assuming glucose was the carbohydrate of interest, while, in fact, a significant portion of the monosaccharides would have existed as fructose (a

The principles of using acid catalyzed carbohydrate dehydration as a quantifier was sufficiently communicated, and the possible sources of error that resulted in a relatively inaccurate determination of the total carbohydrate concentration in the soda and Gatorade will be taken into consideration if conducting this analysis in the

A significant portion of the monosaccharides in soda are fructose, and, therefore, an assumption regarding the correlation that a standard curve generated from a glucose solution has with an unknown soda sample should not be made. It would be more appropriate to use a solution with approximately 1:1 ratios of fructose and glucose when constructing a standard curve for the phenol-sulfuric acid analysis of soda. This is approximately the ratio that is witnessed in commercial HFCS; therefore, it would create a standard curve that correlates more robustly with the soda