Monitoring of Adulteration and Purity in Coconut Oil Using Raman Spectroscopy and Multivariate Curve Resolution

Abstract

This study evaluates the use of Raman spectroscopy with a multivariate curve resolution–alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) analysis to monitor the adulteration and purity of coconut oil. Sunflower, soybean, canola, sesame, corn, castor bean, peanut, palm kernel, babassu, mineral, and Vaseline oils have been used as adulterants in this work. Control charts were developed to evaluate the purity of an oil sample using the scores from the MCR-ALS analysis of a data set containing pure and adulterated oils. These control charts were able to detect the adulteration of coconut oil in a range of 2–30% with all the oils tested. Additionally, quantification models were developed using MCR-ALS with correlation constraints for coconut oil adulterated with sunflower, canola, Vaseline, babassu, and palm kernel oils. The models presented satisfactory results, which had absolute errors below 5%, for samples adulterated with sunflower, canola, and Vaseline oils. The babassu and palm kernel adulterants could also be quantified with a superior margin of error. The results indicated that using Raman spectroscopy with MCR is a clean and non-destructive method for assessing coconut oil purity that can be used without removing a sample from its bottle.