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M. de Miguel Prieto, V. Nürnberger, E. Rosenberg:
"Sensitive Detection of the adulteration of beeswax by GC/MS";
Poster: 42nd International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography (42nd ISCC) and 15th GCxGC Symposium, Riva del Garda (Italy) (eingeladen); 13.05.2018 - 18.05.2018.

Sensitive Detection Of The Adulteration Of Beeswax By GC/MS

Miriam de Miguel, Vanessa Nürnberger, Erwin Rosenberg*

Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Getreidemarkt 9/164 AC, A-1060 Vienna, Austria

Due to the large demand in beeswax, adulteration of this natural product with paraffin and stearin has become an increasingly important issue. Apart from its economic implication it has also some ecological importance, since the materials added may be contaminated by other chemicals that negatively affect the agility and fertility of the bee population when the beeswax is used for the production of middle walls for the beehive.
While there is a lack of reliable and fast test methods for the detection of beeswax adulteration by non-authentic substances, the most suitable method for the detection of beeswax adulteration remains gas chromatography (GC/FID and GC/MS). Due to the fact that beeswax is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, long chain alcohols, fatty acids and esters, the presence of stearin or paraffin can only be detected as a shift in the ratio of individual constituents in the adulterated and the pure beeswax: The addition of stearin is detected by increased concentrations of stearic and palmitic acid while the adulteration with paraffins is detected by significantly higher concentrations of the n-alkanes with 20-35 carbon atoms, and by the presence of hydrocarbons with >35 C atoms. While being an accepted technique for the detection of beeswax adulteration [ ], the sensitivity of this technique is limited to ca. 3% adulterant.
We report here an improvement of the technique that allows detecting significantly lower amounts of the adulterant admixed to beeswax. The technique relies on evaluating the entire pattern of hydrocarbons or of stearin compounds vs. the pattern of beeswax constituents. Although the use of GC/MS is more advantageous, GC/FID can as well be used once the individual peaks are identified.
We will report here on the development of the analytical method, as well as on the application of this technique to the application of commercial beeswax samples.

[ ] E. Waś, T. Szczęsna, H. Rybak-Chmielewska, J. Apic. Sci. 60 (2016) 145.