DEGRADATION KINETIC MODELLING OF ASCORBIC ACID FROM ORANGE JUICE

Vitamin C or ascorbic acid is a basic nutrient, a highly effective antioxidant, widely used as food additive. Therefore, quality control in food industry demands ascorbic acid determination methods. The purpose of this study was to determine vitamin C in natural orange juices by spectrometric and voltammetric methods. Another goal was to determine the kinetic and thermodynamics activation parameters for ascorbic acid degradation in orange juices over time and at different temperatures. It was observed that during storage, ascorbic acid concentrations in orange juices were gradually decreased with time at a rate depending on storage temperature and type of orange juice. The reaction order was determined through integrated graphical analysis where the dependences of ln c_t/c₀ as a function of time reveals the high values for R², indicating that the kinetics of the degradation of AA follows first order reaction at both studied temperatures. For studied samples the loss of ascorbic acid was varied between 4.33% and 9.13%. Enthalpy variation (ΔH) and entropy variation (ΔS) of activation process were obtained from the Eyring–Polany model based on transition state theory. The values of activation energy ranged between 7289.24 kJmol^-1 and 15689.54 kJmol^-1.