Quantification of toxic methanol in vodka

Methanol is a deadly poison contents in low quality or counterfeit alcoholic drinks. It’s a serious problem can be harmful or even lethal. Poisonings by toxic chemicals as methanol occur all over the world.

In this situation it is advantageous to have a reliable and rapid method for methanol identification and quantification. Raman spectroscopy is a powerful method for material identification that enables rapid, noncontact and non-destructive analysis that can be performed through the glass.

Raman spectroscopy provides a unique opportunity to study the chemical composition of materials at the microscale. Such capabilities come at the cost of extremely high requirements for instrumentation: lasers with stabilization of wavelength and power, low noise spectroscopic sensors, and a large clear aperture of spectrometer’s optics. Therefore, demanding Raman spectroscopy and microscopy applications usually require high-end, bulky, and costly Raman instrumentation.

Lightnovo ApS found possible solutions to the most critical Raman miniaturization challenges: need for laser temperature and power stabilization, reduction of sensor dark noise, compensation on pixel-to-pixel quantum efficiency (QE) variation, laser optical isolation and achieving high spectral resolution.