title: Simultaneous determination of phenolic compounds by means of an automated voltammetric "electronic tongue".
abstract: This contribution describes the simultaneous determination of three phenolic compounds, o-cresol, p-chlorophenol and 4-chloro-3-methylphenol, using direct oxidation and amperometric detection coupled by signal deconvolution, accomplished via chemometric methods. Direct oxidation of phenolic compounds is performed at the surface of an epoxy-graphite transducer, by linear scan voltammetry. Due to strong signal overlapping, artificial neural networks (ANNs) were used during data treatment, in a combination of chemometrics and electrochemical sensors known as an "electronic tongue". To calibrate this system properly, a total of 80 mixed samples were prepared automatically by employing a sequential injection analysis (SIA) system designed to automatically generate the information needed to train the network. The phenolic compound concentration varied from 1 to 70 microM for o-cresol, from 0.5 microM to 140 microM for p-chlorophenol and from 1 microM to 100 microM for 4-chloro-3-methylphenol. A good prediction capability was obtained, with correlation coefficients >0.964 when the obtained values were compared with those expected for a set of 24 external test samples not used for training. The results presented here indicate that this technique is a simple and robust analytical method of environmental interest.
authors.affiliation: Grup de Sensors i Biosensors, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Spain.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gutés
authors.forename: A B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Ibáñez
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Céspedes
authors.forename: Salvador
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Alegret
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: del Valle