pp. 371-380
S&M535 Research Paper in Biosensors and Related Areas Published: 2003 Development of a Flow-Type Taste Sensor [PDF] Munehiro Iwakura, Yuji Isomoto, Takahiro Inoue and Kiyoshi Toko (Received July 27, 2003; Accepted October 8, 2003) Keywords: taste sensor, flow-type sensor, five basic tastes, ethanol
The purpose of this study is to develop a taste sensor for real-time control of food quality. The main requirement for the taste sensor used for real-time quality control in food production is that it can measure a small amount of the sample, which is extracted automatically. It is considered that a flow-type sensor is more effective than a conventional taste sensor, which is composed of several kinds of lipid/polymer membranes for trans- forming the information of taste substances into electrical signals. The measurement system was built by combining solenoid valves, a peristaltic pump, some connectors and a computer. Some measurement conditions such as stabilization time and the amount of samples were examined. The flow-type sensing system showed responses to taste sub- stances in a similar way to the conventional batch-type sensing system; i.e., discrimination of taste was successful. Consequently, the ethanol concentration was measured with less than 0.5% error for several brands of sake with different ethanol concentrations. These results suggest that the flow-type taste sensing system is useful for automatic quality control in the fermentation process.
Corresponding author: Munehiro IwakuraCite this article Munehiro Iwakura, Yuji Isomoto, Takahiro Inoue and Kiyoshi Toko, Development of a Flow-Type Taste Sensor, Sens. Mater., Vol. 15, No. 7, 2003, p. 371-380. |