Oxidative and non‐oxidative degradation pathways of L‐ascorbic acid

Summary L‐Ascorbic acid (AA) is an essential component for organisms and is responsible for various functions in the human body. Its structure is in a way that suffering significant structural changes during storage. Herein, the stability of L‐ascorbic acid aqueous solution at various thermal (25 and 90 °C ± 2) and atmospheric oxygen or argon was monitored by optical rotation changes as a function of time intervals. Under oxygen, specific optical rotation [α] of the solution was decreased from + 22.0 to + 2.0 after 32 days and under argon + 11.5 after 9 months at 25 °C. The loss of [α] increased at 90 °C under both oxygen and argon atmospheres. Subsequently, the obtained reaction mixtures were evaporated to dryness and analysed by FT‐IR, 1 H‐NMR and GC‐MS techniques. Results of these analyses indicate that AA was decomposed to a complex mixture of reaction products.