FlavourSpec sensitive analyser for food, flavour and beverage testing

The FlavourSpec comprises advantages of a gas chromatograph (GC) with regard to selectivity and sensitivity of an ion-mobility spectrometer (IMS) enabling the analysis of volatiles in the headspace of liquids and solid samples without any sample pre-treatment.

It operates isotherm in a range of 40–80°C and can be set to >100°C for baking out (cleaning). To better separate compounds, the instrument uses a firmware steered ramping by its integrated electronic pneumatic controller.

FlavourSpec consists of an automatic headspace injector that does all sample conditioning. The operator enters the measurement parameters (number of samples, conditioning and run time) via the easy-to-operate menu on the sampler.

It provides an automatic data acquisition on the device and when connected to a PC 3-D data visualisation and analysis by G.A.S. Laboratory Analytical Viewer (LAV) software.

Besides the possibility of quantifying single marker compounds, additional software plug-ins help to easily detect the appearance of new compounds or the differences of their concentrations to a reference sample to further match peak pattern with sensory wise defined flavours. The result classifies differences from a selected reference (golden standard) to quickly characterise for example, the quality of a sample.

This concept follows the approach of the electronic nose, but using a specific and reliable physical separation/detection of the volatile compounds by GC plus IMS instead.

Applications include control of raw material quality and storage conditions, flavour stability and off-flavour detection, process control, product quality test and authentication.