Jan van den Broek, Sebastian D Keller, Ian Goodall, Katie Parish-Virtue, Claudia Bauer-Christoph, Johannes Fuchs, Despina Tsipi, Andreas T Güntner, Thomas Blum, Jean-Charles Mathurin, Matthias G Steiger, Roghayeh Shirvani, Manfred Gössinger, Monika Graf, Peter Anderhub, Daniel Z'graggen, Claudio Hüsser, Benjamin Faigle, Agapiou Agapios
Analytical methods : advancing methods and applications 2024 Jun 20Methanol is a toxic alcohol contained in alcoholic beverages as a natural byproduct of fermentation or added intentionally to counterfeits to increase profit. To ensure consumer safety, many countries and the EU have established strict legislation limits for methanol content. Methanol concentration is mostly detected by laboratory instrumentation since mobile devices for routine on-site testing of beverages in distilleries, at border stations or even at home are not available. Here, we validated a handheld methanol detector for beverage analysis in an ISO 5725 interlaboratory trial: a total of 119 measurements were performed by 17 independent participants (distilleries, universities, authorities, and competence centers) from six countries on samples with relevant methanol concentrations (0.1, 1.5 vol%). The detector was based on a microporous separation filter and a nanostructured gas sensor allowing on-site measurement of methanol down to 0.01 vol% (in the liquid) within only 2 min by laymen. The detector showed excellent repeatability (<5.4%), reproducibility (<9.5%) and small bias (<0.012 vol%). Additional measurements on various methanol-spiked alcoholic beverages (whisky, rum, gin, vodka, tequila, port, sherry, liqueur) indicated that the detector is not interfered by environmental temperature and spirit composition, featuring excellent linearity (R2 > 0.99) down to methanol concentrations of 0.01 vol%. This device has been recently commercialized (Alivion Spark M-20) with comparable accuracy to the gold-standard gas chromatography and can be readily applied for final product inspection, intake control of raw materials or to identify toxic counterfeit products.
Jan van den Broek, Sebastian D Keller, Ian Goodall, Katie Parish-Virtue, Claudia Bauer-Christoph, Johannes Fuchs, Despina Tsipi, Andreas T Güntner, Thomas Blum, Jean-Charles Mathurin, Matthias G Steiger, Roghayeh Shirvani, Manfred Gössinger, Monika Graf, Peter Anderhub, Daniel Z'graggen, Claudio Hüsser, Benjamin Faigle, Agapiou Agapios. Handheld methanol detector for beverage analysis: interlaboratory validation. Analytical methods : advancing methods and applications. 2024 Jun 20;16(24):3859-3866
PMID: 38847307
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