1. More IR data was taken for each sample for statistical purposes.
2. IR spectra was taken on control substances.
3. Made lots of progress in Java IR spectra analysis program.
4. Distillation of a sample was carried out to separate a volatile substance.
5. GC-MS was done on the separated volatile substance.
For more details:
Two more IR spectrum were obtained for each of the 57 chocolate samples to normalize the data and isolate possible statistical error, which leads to a total of 171 IR spectra. Orders were placed for control substances that were identified to be in chocolate from various geographical origins for IR analysis and to see if these substances could be identified within our wide library of samples (published in a paper by Cambrai et al 2010). The control substances (i.e. volatile compounds) are:
2-phenyl-2-butenal (main artificial ingredient)
4-methyl-2-phenyl-2-pentane
benzaldehyde
EE-2,4-nonadienal
EE-2,4-decadienal (milk odor or fatty,waxy odor)
linalool (floral aroma, from roasted cocoa)
phenylacetaldehyde (aroma)
I'm currently in the process of writing a program in Java that will carry out various functions such as detecting peaks and finding/correlating areas between the IR's of various chocolate samples to see if strong correlations emerge, such as possible linear relationship between varying percentages of cocoa and IR peak area for a particular chocolate brand. While IR analysis was being carried out, we did some things in the meantime.
A preliminary distillation of a sample was carried out to separate possible volatile substances to see if it matched the volatile compounds identified by Cambrai et al.
Here is a picture of our distillation setup:
After the distillation, a gas chromatography-mass spectrum (GC-MS) of the product that was distilled out was done (here for info on GC-MS).
That's about it for this time period. Hope to see you next week!
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