Dichlorophenolindophenol reduced and becomes colorless, the resultant increase in light transmittance can be measured using a spectrophotometer. DCPIP can also be used as an indicator for vitamin C. If vitamin C, which is a good reducing agent, is present, the blue dye, which turns pink in acid conditions, is reduced to a colorless compound by ascorbic acid. This reaction is a redox reaction: vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is oxidized to dehydroascorbic acid, and DCPIP is reduced to the colorless compound DCPIPH In this titration, when all the ascorbic acid in the solution has been used up, there will not be any
Chemistry of ascorbic acid performs the dual function of removing the two acetal groups and ring-closing lactonization. This step yields ascorbic acid. Each of the five steps has a yield larger than 90%. A more biotechnological process, first developed in China in the 1960s, but further developed in the 1990s, bypasses the use of acetone-protecting groups. A second genetically modified microbe species, such as mutant "Erwinia", among others, oxidises sorbose into 2-ketogluconic acid (2-KGA), which can then undergo ring-closing lactonization via dehydration. This method is used in the predominant process used by the ascorbic acid industry in China, which supplies 80% of world's ascorbic