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Automated Dosing of Honey and Oil |
Honey and olive oil are commodities with very high risk of food fraud. All techniques developed to profile food quality and authenticity must detect very subtle deviations outside of the natural variances in these products. Therefore, one of the most important requirements of any method is reproducibility.
Of the range of methods available for the determination of authenticity, many suffer with insufficient sensitivity and poor selectivity when faced with complex food matrices. Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) profiling has been successfully developed and proven for this application.
The viscosity of the honey and olive oil is an additional challenge when trying to prepare accurate concentrations of samples for testing. Trying to pipette accurate and precise amounts is not an easy task.
On an XPR Automatic Balance, from METTLER TOLEDO, weighing out an approximate amount of the viscous sample is fast and simple. Then the solvent is added automatically using highly accurate gravimetric sample preparation, based on the actual weight of the sample you added. This automated liquid dispensing enhances the reproducibility of the sample preparation step and ensures that a precise concentration is prepared quickly and accurately. This method is much faster and more accurate that volumetric sample preparation.
Automated gravimetric liquid dispensing using XPR Automatic Balance offers you several advantages:
- Faster sample preparation (time saving ~50% for edible oils and honey)
- Time-consuming accurate manual weighing of viscous samples is no longer necessary (quick approximate weight is sufficient)
- Fast and highly precise automated solvent dosing
- Solvent amount is automatically calculated from actual sample amount weighed (and based on concentration you wish to achieve)
- Transcription and calculation errors are eliminated due to automated protocols
- Significantly improved accuracy and reproducibility of sample/solvent ratio (reliable concentrations, with reduced variability)
- Rapid liquid dispensing reduces evaporation of volatile compounds or solvents
- Gravimetric sample preparation tends to reduce sample sizes, leading to reduced solvent usage and waste disposal, with associated cost saving benefits
