Counterfeit alcohol has been known to cause not only serious health problems, and even death. Now an ordinary person, despite the new level of protection, fake alcoholic drinks without special laboratory difficult to distinguish from the real thing. Therefore to create a device that would detect low-quality products, employed many scientists from around the world. And, as reported by the editorial Board phys.org experts from the University of Manchester managed to create a simple, portable, and most importantly a very accurate device for identifying counterfeit alcohol.
Portable detector for determining the quality of alcoholic beverages was called SORS. Its principle of operation is based on Raman spectroscopy. In this process, the laser beam is passed through the test substance (in this case liquid), and then analyzed changes in the frequency of radiation caused by the scattered light from the molecules of a substance. As some substances can interact with photons stronger than others, based on the obtained data it is possible to build a kind of “spectral map of an alcoholic beverage”.
In the course of research the developers have experienced SORS 150 types of alcohol, among which there were different types of whiskey, rum, gin and vodka. Of a hundred samples 40 were fake. In addition, the first drinks were tested in a sealed form and then opened and added a little bit of methanol (which causes serious intoxication, detrimental effect on the liver and nervous system). In the end, SORS was able to detect methanol in all alcoholic drinks, which, besides, was filled in bottles made from different glass. Also the device coped well with the detection of counterfeit and diluted products, and was able to distinguish the different varieties of whiskey from each other.
A device that can detect counterfeit alcohol
Vladimir Kuznetsov