Guidelines for evaluating the antioxidant activity of lignin via the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay

30 October 2024, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

The most widespread procedure to measure the antioxidant activity of lignin is via the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay. So far, different experimental procedures (i.e., different solvent, time, etc.) have been used to implement the DPPH methodology without estimating the effect of such modifications on the experimental procedure. To overcome this issue, the impact of the solvent, the time, and the type of substrate on the evaluation of the antioxidant activity (AoA) of lignin via the DPPH assay was investigated in this work. We found that multiple different parameters affect the evaluation of the AoA of lignin: i) the stability of the DPPH radical and the lignin solubility in a given solvent; ii) the importance of reaching steady state (the effect of time); iii) the background noise associated with lignin absorbance at λ = 515 nm (used to monitor the DPPH radical scavenging); iv) lignin structure; v) providing a normalized radical scavenging index (nRSI); vi) comparing nRSI vs. inhibition percentage (IP) values. Overall, our investigation allowed us to provide guidelines on how to perform the DPPH assay for a more reliable evaluation of lignin AoA.

Keywords

normalized radical scavenging index (nRSI)
DPPH method
guidelines
modification
NMR

Supplementary materials

Title
Description
Actions
Title
Supporting Information
Description
Supporting Information for the paper
Actions

Comments

Comments are not moderated before they are posted, but they can be removed by the site moderators if they are found to be in contravention of our Commenting Policy [opens in a new tab] - please read this policy before you post. Comments should be used for scholarly discussion of the content in question. You can find more information about how to use the commenting feature here [opens in a new tab] .
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy [opens in a new tab] and Terms of Service [opens in a new tab] apply.