Electrochemical Method for Detection of Bovine Milk Adulteration with Urea and Melamine

ASTRID HILDING OHLSSON; JONATHAN FAUERBACH; EDUARDO CORTON

Lisboa

Congreso; 7th Ibero-American Congress on Sensors-IBERSENSOR; 2010

Grupo Ibersensors

       Urea and melamine are nitrogen compounds that unfortunately have been used to adulterate milk, as the Chinese well known case of melamine infant milk formula adulteration in 2008. The aim of this work is to develop an economic test to rapid adulterated milk detection. We performed cyclic voltammetries with working electrodes (WEs) of different materials (dental amalgam, Ag, Au and Pt) in adulterated and non-adulterated milk samples. Data acquired had been processed by principal components analysis (PCA). Adulterated and non-adulterated milk samples could be grouped by PCA. Best results were obtained with Au WE, which allowed us to detect adulterated milk samples with 10 % of total milk nitrogen from melamine (0.85 g/l of melamine). In addition, adulterations with 5 % of USM corresponding to 0.61 g/l of urea could be detected. Therefore, this method could be used as a real time milk adulteration detection tool.