The purpose of this work is to demonstrate the usefulness of capillary electrophoresis (CE) instrumentation for determining values of critical micelle concentration (cmc) of surfactants. The approach essentially consists of a CE version of the traditional method of measuring values of cmc by conductivity. Namely, the different conductivities of ionic surfactants in solution depending on their aggregation state, i.e., as monomers or micelles, and the effect on the electrical current as usually measured in a CE apparatus are employed to determine the cmc values. The cmc of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) is obtained in several media such as water, aqueous solutions containing salts, organosaline solutions, and aqueous solutions containing β-cyclodextrin. The cmc values for SDS and CTAB under these conditions are in good agreement with those reported in the literature. Advantages and drawbacks of this procedure as well as its implications in micellar electrokinetic chromatography are discussed. From our results, it is deduced that the present method can be used with high confidence to determine values of cmc in a fast and easy way.

In this contribution, the performance of three different extraction procedures towards the extraction of antioxidants from rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) is presented. Namely, pressurized liquid extraction (PLE), using water and ethanol as solvents, supercritical fluid extraction (SFE), using neat CO(2) and supercritical CO(2) modified with ethanol, as well as a novel extraction process called Water Extraction and Particle formation On-line (WEPO) are directly compared. Different extraction conditions including temperatures, times and pressures have been studied. The produced extracts have been characterized in terms of extraction yield, antioxidant activity (using the DPPH radical scavenging method) and total phenols (using the Folin method). Besides, all the extracts have been chemically characterized using a new quantitative UPLC-MS/MS method. This method allowed the determination of the main antioxidants present in rosemary, including, among others, rosmarinic acid, carnosic acid and carnosol, attaining detection limits as low as 2ng/mL. The results obtained in this study show that PLE using ethanol at high temperatures (200 degrees C) was able to produce extracts with high antioxidant activity (EC(50) 8.8microg/mL) and high yield (ca. 40%) while efficiently extracting antioxidants of diverse polarity, among them, carnosic and rosmarinic acids, regarded as the most important antioxidants present in rosemary. Nevertheless, in this work, the ability of the three studied environmentally friendly extraction techniques to obtain bioactives from natural sources is demonstrated.

In this work some of the newest trends in food processing are reviewed. This revision intends to provide an updated overview (including works published until February 2001) on the newest food processes, including food manufacturing, preservation, and control. Modern processes for food and food ingredients manufacturing based on membrane technology, super-critical fluid technology, and some applications of biotechnology are presented, mainly applied to obtain functional foods, "all-natural" enriched foods, probiotics and prebiotics. Also included is a critical assessment concerning non-thermal preservation techniques used for food preservation, such as high hydrostatic pressure, pulsed electric fields, ultrasound, pulsed light, hurdle systems, etc. Finally, a group of new analytical techniques (i.e., molecular techniques such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), food image analysis, and biosensors) and their use for food and process control is reviewed.

In this review, some of the latest analytical techniques that are being used for the study and characterization of food are examined. This work intends to provide an updated overview (including works published up to June 1999) on the principal applications of such techniques together with their main advantages and drawbacks in food analysis. Some future developments of these systems and their foreseeable application in food characterization are also discussed. The reviewed techniques are those based on spectroscopic, biological, separation, and electrochemical procedures. Moreover, some relevant facts on new systems for sample preparation and on-line couplings are also given.

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