Rapid colorimetric detection technology enables illegal cooking oils with no place to hide

This work could be helpful for the rapid and on-site detection of illegal cooking oil. Their work, entitled “Rapid colorimetric detection of illegal cooking oils based on phase transfer technology”, will be published on SCIENCE CHINA Chemistry, 2013i7j.

The illegal cooking oil includes the refining of the waste oil from restaurant, the repeatedly used oil and the waste animal fats. Because illegal cooking oil may contain toxic polymer, peroxide and so on, is dangerous to human health. The most common clinical symptoms of poisoning include headache, vomiting and diarrhea abdominal pain. Recently years, because the illegal cooking oil inflows into the family kitchens, it led to the serious food safety risks in China. The administration from the government such as monitoring the purchase records and granting the administrative license can be used to control the problem of illegal cooking oil; however the rapid and on-site detection of illegal cooking oil is still necessary and urgent.

Professor HE Yujian, associate professor ZHAO Hong, doctoral students YUAN Longfei and ZHOU Ying et al., from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences establish two rapid and convenient colorimetric detections of illegal cooking oils based on phase transfer technology. The copper ions and the cationic gold nanoparticles protected by poly (diallyl dimethylammonium) chloride (PDDA) were used as the recognition probes. And the illegal cooking oil could be detected by naked-eye (as shown in the Figure 1). The results showed that qualified cooking oil mixed with 2.8% of the illegal cooking oil could be detected, and more than 5% of the illegal cooking oil could be accurately detected by naked-eye. These methods were applied in blind test for total of 235 samples; the results showed that the accurate rates of the blind tests were 95.7%.

Compared with the traditional methods, this method is a cost-effective process, and allowed rapid and simple colorimetric detection of illegal cooking oils without omplex pre-treatment. The work could provide beneficial methods for the rapid on-site detection of illegal cooking oil. It has a favorable application potential in civilian fields because of its high accuracy, simple and low cost. These research findings have applied for national patent.

In addition, Professor HE Yujian and his group have established various detections of illegal cooking oils based on NMR, GC, HPLC and MALDI-TOF-MS technology since 2012. These works have been published in professional journal of analytical chemistry and applied for national patents.

See the article:

YUAN L F, ZHOU Y, HE P, CAI B T, XU X L, LIU Q J, ZHONG W K, LI Q L, ZHAO H, HE Y J. Rapid colorimetric detection of illegal cooking oils based on phase transfer technology. SCIENCE CHINA Chemistry, 2013i7j, doi: 10.1360/032012-459

http://chem.scichina.com:8081/sciB/CN/abstract/abstract510311.shtml

Science China Press Co., Ltd. (SCP) is a scientific journal publishing company of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). For 50 years, SCP takes its mission to present to the world the best achievements by Chinese scientists on various fields of natural sciences researches.

Media Contact

HE Yujian EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.scichina.com

All latest news from the category: Life Sciences and Chemistry

Articles and reports from the Life Sciences and chemistry area deal with applied and basic research into modern biology, chemistry and human medicine.

Valuable information can be found on a range of life sciences fields including bacteriology, biochemistry, bionics, bioinformatics, biophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geobotany, human biology, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, zoology, bioinorganic chemistry, microchemistry and environmental chemistry.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors