Electronic Tongue Applied to Phenolic Compounds Analysis

Abstract

A new voltammetric electronic tongue has been developed for the simultaneous determination of p-aminophenol, p-chlorophenol, and p-chloro-m-methylphenol. The three analytes are high environmental pollutants. Three epoxy-graphite composite electrodes have been used as detectors, with two of them being modified by the addition of metal catalysts in their composition. Simple fixed potential voltammetry has been used in order to simplify measurements. Artificial neural networks were used as chemometric tools for learning and prediction of the system. Good correlations in both modeling and predicting capacities have been obtained for the range of 1 to 28 µM of the three phenolic compounds.

Keywords:

• Electronic tongue
• Phenolic compounds
• Voltammetry

Financial support for this work was provided by MEC (Madrid, Spain) through project DPI2003-08229-C03-02.

Notes

^a Metal catalysts were gold and palladium for two of the electrodes. The third electrode consisted of 80% epoxy and 20% graphite.

Note: Measuring of each triplet of concentrations was performed until current reached the steady state and recorded.