UV Spectrophotometric Quantification of Sudan-IV Dye in Palm Oil from Major Markets of Benin Metropolis

The deficit in the supply of palm oil in Nigeria over the years has been met in part through smuggling of the product from different sources into the Nigerian market by marketers of which some of the products have been reported to be adulterated with azo dyes. The aim of this study was to detect and quantify sudan dyes in adulterated palm oil from the open market using simple and inexpensive procedures such as analytical thin layer chromatography (TLC) and Ultra violet spectrophotometric methods respectively. Seven palm oil samples from the open markets within Benin metropolis labelled as (AUC, AUC2, IK1, IK5, OLK1, ADIT, and OB) were screened for the presence of Sudan-III and Sudan-IV dyes. Four of the samples (IK1, IK5, OLK1, ADIT) were confirmed to contain Sudan-IV dye with quantities of 22.5mg/L, 21.7mg/L, 29.5mg/L, 23.8mg/L respectively. This experiment shows that the use of easy and cheap methods such as TLC and UV-spectrophotometry can be used to detect and quantify Sudan dyes in adulterated palm oil.