Sugar quality control with

NanoCuvette™ One

Do you want to do quality control for sugar, honey, foods or beverages?

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Refractive measures are widely used in the sugar industry for rapid quantification of the sugar content in sugar solutions.
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Sugar is the generic name for sweet, soluble carbohydrates. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides and include glucose and fructose. The ‘normal table sugar’, most commonly used in food, is sucrose, a disaccharide composed of one unit glucose and one unit fructose. Different sugars are found in the tissue of most plants, and can be extracted at concentrations sufficient for commercial use from sugar beet and sugarcane. Such sugar is a common additive in a range of food and beverages.
Sucrose is a disaccharide. It forms when the monosaccharide sugars glucose and fructose react in a condensation reaction.
Refractive index measurement of sugar solutions is typically used to determine the sugar content. For pure solutions of known compound the refractive index measurement can be used to determine the exact concentration of the specific sugar. For mixed solutions with a high sugar content, the refractive index measurement can be used to give an approximate measure of the sugar content.

Introducing sugar qualification in UV-Vis instruments

Conventionally a specialized refractometer has been required for the refractometric quantification of sugar. However, with the innovative NanoCuvetteTM One, a nanosensor is installed in a cuvette, allowing quantification of sugar to be carried out in a standard spectrophotometer. Because sugar does not absorb light in the UV-visible spectrum, traditionally, spectrophotometers have been unable to quantify sugar.
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All that is needed is our NanoCuvette™ One and an UV-VIS spectrophotometer for instance Shimadzu, PerkinElmer, Thermo Ficher, Mettler Toledo, VWR or similar.

Conclusion

Traditionally a specialized refractometer has been required for determination of the refractive index. However, with the innovative NanoCuvette™ One, an optical filter is installed in a cuvette, allowing determination of the refractive index to be carried out over time in a standard spectrophotometer. This way sugar concentrations can be measured label-free with a conventional spectrophotometer down to 0.5 µL of sample.