MOSCOW, November 7– . A portable device for quickly determining the fat content of milk was developed by SamSTU scientists. According to them, the created system is designed on the basis of the three most common LEDs and allows you to determine the fat content of the product not only in the laboratory, but also in the field. The results of the study are presented in Sensors.
According to statistics, milk is a product in massive demand throughout the world, and in some countries its annual consumption reaches tens of millions of tons.
Experts note that the nutritional value of dairy products is determined by the content of three components: fat, protein and lactose. Moreover, milk fat can be isolated and used as an important component for food production, for example, for the production of ice cream and confectionery products. It is the fat content that determines the commercial cost of milk.
To determine the fat content of milk, industry uses either direct sample separation or spectral analysis in the infrared region. These methods require the use of expensive, bulky laboratory equipment, mostly foreign.
Scientists from Samara Polytechnic University have developed an inexpensive, compact milk quality analyzer that can be used outside the chemical laboratory, for example in the field conditions, or integrate it directly into the production line. His work is based on different physical principles for measuring the fat content of milk.
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“The uniqueness of the solution lies in the fact that the analysis is based on the effect of light scattering by colloidal milk particles — fat globules and protein micelles in the visible region of the spectrum. LEDs of blue, green and red colors alternately irradiate the sample, and the detector records the scattered light passing through it. Scattering occurs differently depending on the size of the particles, on the one hand, and the wavelength of the incident radiation, on the other,” said the head of the department of “Analytical and Physical Chemistry” Faculty of Chemical Technology of SamSTU Andrey Bogomolov.
He explained that, despite the low signal intensities, modern mathematical apparatus is capable of using them to build predictive models. The trained model can determine the milk fat content of a sample based on three values obtained — one from each LED.
According to Bogomolov, the transition from laboratory analysis to inexpensive portable devices opens up completely new opportunities for monitoring milk quality and dairy products. Optical sensors can be built directly into milking machines, milk tankers, and dairy production lines.
«The economic component for the mass implementation of milk analyzers is decisive, since milk is a product of mass consumption. And here our new LED technology has no competitors «- emphasized Bogomolov.
In the future, any consumer of dairy products will be able to purchase a device of this type and check the fat content of both fresh and processed milk at home.