Determination of Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na and Zn in Food Using AAS in Fast Sequential mode

As more food products are imported and exported around the globe, greater quality control methods are needed. Some laboratories are looking for optimized systems that can efficiently and accurately analyze up to eight elements or more in as many as 100 samples per day. Such optimization is essential because it is inefficient to dedicate one analyst to manually running large numbers of samples every day.Cu, Mn, Fe, K, Na, Mg, and Zn are seven elements most commonly measured in food testing. Flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry continues to be an appealing technique for this analysis due to its low purchase price, simple hardware and lower operational costs.In this study, an Agilent AA 280FS flame atomic absorption spectrometer featuring Fast Sequential (FS) mode and PRecision Optimized Measurement Time (PROMT) was used to determine seven elements, Cu, Mn, Fe, K, Na, Mg, and Zn, in a wheat flour reference material.