Food Science

Determination of Vitamin C Concentration by Titration

18th June 2015

Group 3 Members:

1. Pong Kittikhom Wannapak 5761044

2. Non Tanarut Lerdsuwanrut 5761154

3. Jidd Vorawan Chanvorawit 5761174

4. Pew Wittida Chantawichayasuit 5761179

5. Pete Yanin Budhijalananda 5761181

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 Nowadays, there are many food preservation ways such as dehydrating, canning,

and freezing. Each type has different procedures and can be done at home or factory. Most

of the preservation is affect the nutrients in food somehow. Moreover, the preservation also

gives us three main benefits. First, it gives the longer storage of food. Second, we can find

food such as fruits and vegetables that are not in the season (can eat your favorite fruits

even it isnt the season of them). Last, the food becomes more convenient to transform into

other food. When we talk about food preservation, most of the people are concern about

how much nutrients that this food have compared to raw or fresh one. As you know, the

things that we can classify clearly are vitamins and minerals. Furthermore, the vitamin itself

is divided into two types, the water soluble one and the fat soluble one.

In this experiment, we are dealing with vitamin C concentration in each type of fruit

preservation which are fresh kiwi, dehydrated kiwi, and frozen kiwi. Since the vitamin C is a

water soluble vitamin that also widely known as an ascorbic acid and we want to find the

concentration of it, so the neutralization and titration come in place. Neutralization is the

reaction of hydrogen ions from acid to hydroxide ions from base that give the products of

water and salt. At the same time, titration is the processes that use to determine the

concentration of an acid or base by neutralize it. Moreover, it also collaborates with the

re-dox reaction or also known as oxidation reduction reaction. In this experiment, our acid is

the ascorbic acid from kiwis and the base is iodine. The acid is oxidized or losing electrons

and become dehydroascorbic acid and the iodine is reduced or gaining electrons from the

acid and become iodine ions. Furthermore, we also added the starch indicator to the solution

to indicate the color changes and tell us when our solution is totally neutralized. After the

titration, we calculate the molarity which is the concentration of substance by the formula of

=
mol/L and calculate the number of moles by the formula of

()
= ( )
to find the concentration

of ascorbic acid or vitamin C in each preserved kiwis.

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 Purpose: To find out the vitamin C concentration in different types of food

preservation by titration ascorbic acid and iodine.

Hypothesis: If we perform the titration correctly, then the dehydrated kiwis will contain

lesser amount of vitamin C than the fresh kiwis but more than the frozen kiwis.

Materials:

Lab coat 20 mL pipette

Gloves 10 mL and 100 mL measuring cylinders

Goggles 250 mL conical flask

Burette and Stand Starch indicator solution

100 mL or 200 mL volumetric flask Iodine solution

Procedure:

Sample Preparation of Fresh, Frozen, or Canned Fruit

1. Cut a 100 g sample into small pieces and grind.

2. Add 10 mL portions of distilled water several times while grinding the sample,
each time removing the liquid into a 100 mL volumetric flask.

3. Strain the ground fruit through cheesecloth, rinsing with distilled water.

4. Make the extracted solution up to 100 mL with distilled water.

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 Titration

1. Pipette 20 mL of the sample solution into a 250 mL conical flask.

2. Add about 80 mL of distilled water.

3. Add 1 mL of starch indicator solution.

4. Titrate the sample with the iodine solution.

The endpoint of the titration is identified as the first permanent trace of a color change.

5. Repeat the titration 3 times.

6. Repeat the titration procedure for either the dehydrated fruit or the frozen fruit.

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 Results:

The titrated fresh kiwis The titrated dehydrated kiwis.

Data Table:

Table 1: Titration results of the fresh kiwis

The Fresh Kiwis

Volume Trail 1 Trail 2 Trail 3 Average

Iodine 5.28 mL 4.95 mL 3.85 mL 0.00469 L

Sample 20 mL 20 mL 20.02 mL 0.02 L

Table 2: Titration results of the dehydrated kiwis

The Dehydrated Kiwis

Volume Trail 1 Trail 2 Trail 3 Average

Iodine 6.75 mL 6.04 mL 5.65 mL 0.00614 L

Sample 20.01 mL 20.02 mL 20.02 mL 0.02001 L

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 Table 3: Titration results of the frozen kiwis (from Phrares group)

The Frozen Kiwis

Volume Trail 1 Trail 2 Trail 3 Average

Iodine 3.19 mL 3.14 mL 3.24 mL 0.00319 L

Sample 20 mL 20 mL 20 mL 0.02 L

Analyzing Results:

1. Which form of food preservation contained the highest concentration of Vitamin C

(ascorbic acid)? You need to collect the data from the other groups for the samples

you did not titrate.

- We calculate the number of moles in each sample that we did and the one

that have the highest number of moles have the highest concentration of

vitamin C is dehydrated kiwis. As a result, the dehydrated kiwis contained the

highest concentration of vitamin C with 0.00000618 moles. The fresh kiwis

contained lesser amount of concentration but it is also higher than the frozen

kiwis with 0.00000234 moles of vitamin C. The frozen kiwis contained the

least concentration of Vitamin C with 0.00000154 moles (according to table 4

below).

Table 4: Concentration of vitamin C in the fresh, dehydrated, and frozen kiwi.

Types of kiwi Number of ascorbic acid moles

Fresh
0.00000234 moles (2nd)
Dehydrated
0.00000618 moles (1st)
Frozen
0.00000154 moles (3rd)

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2. Were your hypotheses correct? Explain. What might be some reasons to explain why

your hypotheses were not correct?

- Our hypothesis would have been corrected if we done the experiment

properly, technically, the fresh kiwis will contain the highest amount of vitamin

C in it. However, in this experiment it werent. The results show that

dehydrated kiwis contain the highest amount of vitamin because in the

preparation, the dehydrated have the lesser weight than others. This make

the results come out improperly and our hypothesis go wrong. Moreover, if

every types of kiwi have the same weight, when we do the titration you will

see that the dehydrated kiwis will have the lower amount of vitamin C than

fresh but the highest for preserved kiwis.

3. From this experiment, do you think you could predict the concentration of all vitamins

and minerals in a food prepared with the different preservation techniques? (Think:

Are all vitamins and minerals the same?) Explain.

- In different preservation techniques we think we still have difficulty to predict

because it depends on type of techniques and also type of vitamins that affect

on the concentration of vitamin. For example, dehydrating technique retains

high amount of vitamin C compared with other techniques in this lab

experiment. Since, vitamins are divided into two types which are water

soluble and fat soluble. Additional, the dehydrating can keep the vitamin C in

high amount because it doesnt get dissolved since we dont cook it.

Moreover, all minerals are not the same. There are many types of mineral

such as iron, calcium and phosphorus which have different properties in

themselves.

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Conclusion:

To conclude this lab experiment, we did the experiment to find out the vitamin C

concentration in different types of food preservations which are dehydrating and freezing by

titrating ascorbic acid and iodine. Before we did the lab experiment we did the hypothesis

and our prediction was If we perform the titration correctly, then the dehydrated kiwis will

contain lesser amount of vitamin C than the fresh kiwis, but more than the frozen kiwis.

Surprisingly, the results are not based on our hypothesis. As we observed the results

in the data tables, the dehydrated ones used iodine more than other two because the

dehydrating has the highest vitamin C concentration. In addition, the result make us

surprised because it was not properly prepare. The dehydrated samples have the most

concentration instead of fresh samples, which is because the dehydrated sample had fewer

grams so it had the highest amount of vitamin C concentration among those three. The

results from titration came out that the fresh and frozen have the same color which is grey

but the frozen one was lighter in color. The dehydrated kiwis have brownish-blue color.

Moreover, to compare two of the preservation processes, we found that dehydrating is the

best process to preserve the ascorbic acid.

In this experiment, we did perfectly on dropping iodine on to each of the sample. We

were also did a good job on measuring each sample of kiwis on to the flask. It was very

accurate on the number and decimal. However, there were a lot of mistakes or something

that we could make it better. Although we were accurate on measuring each sample and

solution, but it still doesnt accurate enough in terms of science. Another thing that we can

improve in our experiment in the future is the time that we use per one experiment. We were

the group that accurately drops iodine but we also used much more time to do the

experiment than the other groups. We used the whole period or even over the period to do

the experiment comparing to other groups that did the same experiment. Moreover, the

overall of our experiment was quite good according to our result.

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 Lastly, we learned how to calculate the number of moles like what we calculate the

ascorbic acid per gram in fruit. We know what food preservation effect to the foods nutrients,

and which process is the best for preserve the water soluble vitamin. Finally, we also learned

that some of the food preservation products that come from the factory are added nutrients

(such as vitamin C, vitamin B1) in it too. We hope that our lab report will be helpful to those

who concerns about which food preservation is the best in term of remaining the nutrients

that they are looking for.