Abstract
The paper presents the application of an electronic nose instrument to fast evaluation of agricultural distillates differing in quality. The investigations were carried out using a prototype of electronic nose equipped with a set of six semiconductor sensors by FIGARO Co., an electronic circuit converting signal into digital form and a set of thermostats able to provide gradient temperature characteristics to a gas mixture. A volatile fraction of the agricultural distillate samples differing in quality was obtained by barbotage. Interpretation of the results involved three data analysis techniques: principal component analysis, single-linkage cluster analysis and cluster analysis with spheres method. The investigations prove the usefulness of the presented technique in the quality control of agricultural distillates. Optimum measurements conditions were also defined, including volumetric flow rate of carrier gas (15 L/h), thermostat temperature during the barbotage process (15 °C) and time of sensor signal acquisition from the onset of the barbotage process (60 s).
Highlights
The quality of agricultural distillates depend on their composition and due to their complexity some problems can be encountered during their purification
This paper presents our investigations using an electronic nose prototype of equipped with six low-cost, semiconductor sensors by FIGARO Co. (Osaka, Japan)
Data analysis using PCA and cluster analysis was performed for selected time instants on averaged sensor characteristic signals
Summary
The quality of agricultural distillates depend on their composition and due to their complexity some problems can be encountered during their purification (rectification). An important stage of rectified alcohol production is the quality control and classification of the agricultural distillates [1]. In a number of industrial alcohol plants quality control and classification of raw material is done using organoleptic analysis characterized by many shortcomings originating from the limitations of the human senses. Alcohol industry representatives report that distillery plants collect agricultural distillates of low quality. There are still no unequivocal methods of differentiation between high quality agricultural distillates and those produced from worse quality raw materials or using improper technology. Processing of raw alcohol of low quality results in high costs for further processing, causing financial losses to the manufacturer
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