Method for determining origin of alcohol or sugar containing products
OwnerIvan Smajlovicinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for determining origins of food products, and more specifically for determining geographic and/or biological origin of food products containing alcohols or sugars includes preparing an alcohol sample from a product in question, removing exchangeable hydrogen/deuterium atoms from alcohol molecules of the sample, determining the isotopic composition of non-exchangeable hydrogen/deuterium atoms from sample alcohol, and analyzing results for adulteration or determination of product origin. In addition, alcohol δ13C and δ18O isotopic values, along with δ18O isotopic value of the product water are used for the analysis. Products containing sugar are also subjected to tightly controlled fermentation.
Claims23
A process for determining origin of a food product containing alcohols or sugars, comprising:
- preparing an alcohol sample from the food product;
- at least partly converting the alcohol sample into an olefin by dehydration wherein exchangeable hydrogen atoms and exchangeable deuterium atoms in the alcohol sample are removed;
- measuring a relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the olefin, where the relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the olefin represents a relative ratio of non- exchangeable hydrogen atoms and non-exchangeable deuterium atoms of the alcohol sample;
- and
- comparing the relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the olefin with one or more known relative ratios of non-exchangeable hydrogen and non-exchangeable deuterium of olefins from food products with known origins.
A process of measuring a relative ratio of isotopes in an alcohol-containing composition of matter to determine an origin of the alcohol-containing composition of matter, comprising:
- purging an alcohol thermal dehydration vessel;
- heating the dehydration vessel;
- injecting a preliminary isolated alcohol sample;
- vaporizing the alcohol sample into overheated alcoholic fume which passes over dehydration catalyst to remove exchangeable hydrogen and exchangeable deuterium from the alcohol sample resulting in an alkene gas;
- passing the alkene gas into a pyrolysis reactor and over gas chromatography column to an interface so the alkene gas is detected on an isotope ratio mass spectrometer;
- measuring a hydrogen and deuterium relative ratio of alkene gas molecules of the alkene gas, where the hydrogen and deuterium relative ratio represents a relative ratio of non-exchangeable hydrogen atoms and non-exchangeable deuterium atoms of the alcohol sample;
- and,
- comparing the relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the alkene with one or more known relative ratios of non-exchangeable hydrogen and non-exchangeable deuterium of alkene from food products with known origins.
A method of determining origin of a food product containing ethanol, comprising:
- preparing an ethanol sample from the food product;
- at least partly converting the ethanol sample into ethylene by dehydrating the ethanol sample so that exchangeable hydrogen and exchangeable deuterium from the ethanol are removed;
- measuring a relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the ethylene, where the relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the ethylene represents a relative ratio of non-exchangeable hydrogen atoms and non-exchangeable deuterium atoms of the ethanol sample;
- and
- comparing the measured relative ratio of hydrogen and deuterium of the ethylene with known relative ratios of non-exchangeable hydrogen and non-exchangeable deuterium of ethylene from food products with known origins.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.