Automatic flow procedure for the determination of ethanol in wine exploiting multicommutation and enzymatic reaction with detection by chemiluminescence

An automatic procedure for the determination of ethanol in wines using a flow system based on multicommutation and enzymatic reaction is described. Alcohol oxidase was immobilized on aminopropyl glass beads and packed in an acrylic column. The peroxide due to enzymatic reaction with ethanol reacted with luminol and generated the chemiluminescence radiation that was monitored by using a laboratory-made detector based on photodiodes. The system manifold comprised a set of 3-way solenoid valves controlled by a microcomputer furnished with electronic interfaces, which ran on software written in Quick BASIC 4.5 to provide facilities to perform on-line sample dilution, reagent addition, and data acquisition. After system parameters optimization, ethanol samples were processed without prior pretreatment. The following suitable features were achieved: linear response ranging from 2.5 to 25% (v/v) ethanol, relative standard deviation of 1.8% (n = 10), detection limit of 0.3% (v/v) ethanol, sampling rate of 23 determinations per hour, and low reagent consumption of 0.23 mg luminol and 7 mg hexacyanoferrate (III) per determination. When the results were compared with those obtained using the AOAC Official Method, no significant difference at the 90% confidence level was observed.