Study on factors affecting the formation of furan in three normal sugars

The aim of this research was to use HS-GC-MS to quantify the furan levels in model reaction samples after heat processing and study the effect of pH, temperature and heating time on furan formation. The results showed that pH, temperature and heating time affected profoundly furan formation from model systems of glucose, fructose and sucrose due to thermal processing. For glucose and fructose, less furan was formed at acid pH, but for sucrose, the less amount of furan was formed at alkaline pH. However, for glucose and fructose solution, pH affected the formation of furan only when the temperature was higher than 90℃ . Additionally, higher temperature (>130℃) was needed to form furan for sucrose solution , but for glucose and fructose solution to form furan was just about 90℃. In addition, the furan amounts were noticed to increase with heating time in these three sugar model systems. Thus, this present study could be regarded as a research basis and a technical support for further eliminating the formation of furan in heat processed food.