HYDERABAD: The researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad are developing a smartphone-based sensor to detect adulteration in milk. They have developed a detector which changes colour according to the acidity of the milk and algorithms loaded on to mobile phones can detect this change.
The research, undertaken by a team led by Prof. Shiv Govind Singh, Department of Electrical Engineering and comprising Dr. Soumya Jana and Dr. Siva Rama Krishna Vanjari, Associate Professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering, was published in the November issue of Food Analytical Methods journal.
Speaking about their research, Prof. Shiv Govind Singh said since most techniques used to detect adulteration require expensive setup and can not be converted into low-cost easy-to-use devices, the mass appeal is missing.
“We need to develop simple devices that the consumer can use to detect milk contamination. It should be possible to make milk adulteration detection fail-safe by monitoring all of these parameters at the same time, without the need for expensive equipment,” Prof Singh added.
The researchers have used a process called ‘electrospinning’ to produce paper-like material made of nanosized (~10-9 m diameter) fibres of nylon, loaded with a combination of three dyes.
The “halochromic” paper changes colour in response to changes in acidity and acts like a detector in case of adulteration. The colour of the sensor strip after dipping in milk is captured by phone camera using an algorithm, and the data is transformed into acidity ranges. Researchers have found classification with an accuracy of 99.71%.