Quantitative Analysis of African Grogue
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Wei Zhou
Department
CSM - Chemistry and Biochemistry
Abstract
A comparative analysis on African Grogue, a type of alcohol most like American Moonshine, for possible contaminants from both the fermentation process as well as distillation. The initial qualitative analysis was done using GC-MS to find what contaminants were present in the samples and quantitative was done using a variety of methods such as GC-MS and UV-Vis spectroscopy. The major species of concern were phthalate and copper salts from distillation as well as harmful alcohols like methanol, propanol and butanol that can arise from fermentation. Only a few of the samples had detectable amounts of phthalates however the majority of samples contained detectable levels of butanol, propanol, methanol and acetic acid.
Disciplines
Analytical Chemistry
Quantitative Analysis of African Grogue
A comparative analysis on African Grogue, a type of alcohol most like American Moonshine, for possible contaminants from both the fermentation process as well as distillation. The initial qualitative analysis was done using GC-MS to find what contaminants were present in the samples and quantitative was done using a variety of methods such as GC-MS and UV-Vis spectroscopy. The major species of concern were phthalate and copper salts from distillation as well as harmful alcohols like methanol, propanol and butanol that can arise from fermentation. Only a few of the samples had detectable amounts of phthalates however the majority of samples contained detectable levels of butanol, propanol, methanol and acetic acid.