Ethanol content determination in hard liquor drinks, beers, and wines, using a catalytic fuel cell. Comparison with other two conventional enzymatic biosensors: correlation and statistical data

Abstract

A catalytic fuel cell has been employed to check ethanol content in several samples of commercial wines, beers and hard liquor drinks. Two other conventional biosensors, based on catalase or alcohol oxidase enzyme, were also used, to the same purpose, on the same samples. Data obtained by three sensor methods have been compared and correlated. Lastly t-test and F-test were applied.

Direct Methanol (or Ethanol) Fuel Cell as Enzymatic or Non-Enzymatic Device, Used to Check Ethanol in Several Pharmaceutical and Forensic Samples

“…The present research can be considered as belonging to the research field reported in the literature concerning the development of fuel cells [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ] and biofuel cells [ 28 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 ] for several purposes. This study positively extended applications to several pharmaceutical products (dyes) by a simple DMFC catalytic device (already performed on several alcoholic beverage samples [ 25 , 26 ]). The application to test the ethanol content of denaturated alcohol failed.…”

“…Moreover, in this research, it was firstly demonstrated that the fuel cell can be useful to determine the ethanol content in several relevant pharmaceutical formulations, as dyes, with sufficient precision, accuracy, and robustness; secondly it was demonstrated that the enzymatic device can be also utilized to test other particular more complex organic molecules of pharmaceutical interest, such as the antibiotic imipenem; lastly, it was demonstrated that the enzymatic fuel cell seems to be useful for certain analytical forensic purposes, i.e., the measurement of ethanol in saliva and serum. In conclusion, owing to the low cost, the very low encumbrance of the cell and of the measurement system [ 25 ], and the high sensitivity and the short response time, achieved by adding enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase to the anodic section, this small enzymatic DMFC device [ 27 ] can be proposed as a suitable tool for several simple and fast analytical tests to be easy applied also in situ, with a few additional precautions [ 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”

“…These researches have effectively shown the possibility of this kind of application, but only by means of particular and complex types of fuel cell, not useful for common application to real samples. However, our research group recently performed the first researches of this type, by using a simple and suitable direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) [ 25 , 26 ]. In a further study [ 27 ], the performances of our fuel cell were made more efficient for the determination of ethanol by immobilizing an enzyme into the device [ 27 ].…”

“…By using a non-enzymatic DMFC device, the ethanol content of several pharmaceutical dyes was easily checked. The obtained results were compared both with the ethanol content declared by the producer and with the obtained data, by analyzing the same samples using a conventional amperometric catalase enzyme sensor, recently prepared in our laboratory and already used to validate results obtained using DMFC device for ethanol determination in beverages [ 26 ]. It was also attempted to utilize the fuel cell to validate the ethanol content of denatured commercial ethanol, usually available in drugstores.…”

Direct Catalytic Fuel Cell Device Coupled to Chemometric Methods to Detect Organic Compounds of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Interest

“…Before the current measurements, the Emstat automatically measured the open circuit voltage (OCV) value for a time of about 200 s, and then, the anode potential was set to a value of the optimized applied potential (OAP = OCV−100 mV) [ 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”