Thread: Citric Acid and Ascorbic Acid relationship!

Hi,

I am new to this forum and believe to get answer for questions to my small research!
let me ask you a few on citric acid. Actually, I am doing research on citrus fruits ability to conduct electricity as citric acid plays a role as electrolytes. So, I am looking for citric acid comparison in different fruits, but what i found out is only ascorbic acid comparison statistic. In this case, as there is only one oxygen atom difference between citric acid and ascorbic acid, can i assume this statistic more or less true for citric acid as well? Or, please kindly tell me what other antioxidants/ ascorbic acid can be used to calculate cirtic acid content.

Much appreciated your help in advance!

I doubt there is a good correlation between ascorbic acid and citric acid. Citric acid occurs in higher amounts in citric fruit (not surprisingly!) whereas ascorbic acid occurs in many different types of fruit and vegetables. My impression is that the levels of ascorbic acid are so low it won't make much difference to the conductivity.

I had a quick look and didn't find a lot on concentrations of citric acid. But there is this table and diagram
PubMed Central, Table 1: J Endourol. 2008 March; 22(3): 567
PubMed Central, FIG. 1: J Endourol. 2008 March; 22(3): 567
Both from this paper: Quantitative Assessment of Citric Acid in Lemon Juice, Lime Juice, and Commercially-Available Fruit Juice Products

But note that, "Within species, these values vary depending on the cultivar and the circumstances in which the fruit was grown." [Source: ]Citric acid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Also, although many non-technical sources simply say that ascorbic acid has one less oxygen atom that citric acid, this is pretty meaningless. They are completely different compounds with different structures and properties. (And be very cautious about information from "health" and "nutrition" websites as many of these are full of crap errors; for example one said that ascorbic acid is not a naturally occurring compound!)

Hi,

Thank you so much for your information on citric acid, which is the one I have been really searching during these days. This article is much better and suited to my research, Electricity Generating from fruit, mostly based on Citric acid rather than ascorbic acid. If I could get a easy way to measure citric acid level in other type of fruits, it will be perfect as I can make comparison on different fruits. Or do you know a way to calculate out with formula from other contents?
Please kindly assist me if you know a way to measure or find.
Much Appreciated your help.
Ya Mone