Detect milk adulteration in just 30 seconds by this unique hand held device!!
Posted on: 28/Mar/2023 9:22:01 AM
Identifying adulteration in the milk would not be time consuming hereafter, thanks to the efforts of the IIT Madras based researchers!!
It is now brought out by a press release from IIT-Madras that the researchers have developed a 3D paper based handheld device that could detect milk adulteration in just 30 seconds. This has caught the attention of many now. The test can be done easily in the houses itself. This hand held device could detect some of the commonly used ingredients for adulteration such as urea, laundry detergent, soap, starch, hydrogen peroxide, salt etc,
It must be taken into note that routine lab based tests to determine the purity of milk is costly and time consuming. This new hand held device could be used to detect the adulteration in the fruit juices, milk, drinking water etc.
The research work on preventing milk adulteration was led by the Associate Professor of the dept of Mechanical Engineering of IIT-M, Mr. Ballab Singha Mahapatra, The researchers like Mr. Subashish and Dr. Priyankan Dutta etc played a huge role. The research works have been published in the journal Nature. It was later explained by Mr. Ballab Singha Mahapatra that the 3D paper based microfluidic device has upper and lower layers with the middle sandwiched structure. He threw light on how 3D design would be perfect to transport dense fluids at consistent speeds.
Working principle of the device:
Information collected is that the paper reacts with the reagents and 2 layers of paper adhere to both sides after drying. The envelopes would adhere to the double sided tapes. Here, Whatman filter paper is used and this would help in the movement of liquids and save lots of reagents. Truth is that all reagents would get dissolved in distilled water or ethanol as per their dissolving abilities.
