Department of Chemistry, "La Sapienza" University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2018 Oct 23;18(11):3596. doi: 10.3390/s18113596.
It was already demonstrated by our research group that a direct catalytic methanol (or ethanol) fuel cell (DMFC) device can be used also for analytical purposes, such as the determination of ethanol content in beverages. In the present research we extended the application to the analysis of several ethanol-based pharmaceutical products, i.e., pharmaceutical tinctures (dyes) and disinfectants. In recent work we have also shown that the use of alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme as a component of the anodic section of a direct catalytic methanol (or ethanol) fuel cell significantly improves the performance of a simple DMFC device, making it more suitable to measure ethanol (or methanol) in real samples by this cell. At the same time, we have also shown that DMFC can respond to certain organic compounds that are more complex than methanol and ethanol and having R(R')CH-OH group in the molecule. Firstly, pharmaceutical dyes were analyzed for their ethanol content using the simple catalytic DMFC device, with good accuracy and precision. The results are illustrated in the present paper. Additionally, a detailed investigation carried out on commercial denatured alcoholic samples evidenced several interferences due to the contained additives. Secondly, we hypothesized that by using the enzymatic fuel cell it would be possible to improve the determination, for instance, of certain antibiotics, such as imipenem, or else carry out determinations of ethanol content in saliva and serum (simulating forensic tests, correlated to drivers "breath test"); even if this has already been hypothesized in previous papers, the present study is the first to perform them experimentally, obtaining satisfactory results. In practice, all of the goals which we proposed were reached, confirming the remarkable opportunities of the enzymatic (or non-enzymatic) DMFC device.
我们的研究小组已经证明，直接催化甲醇（或乙醇）燃料电池（DMFC）装置也可用于分析目的，例如测定饮料中的乙醇含量。在本研究中，我们将应用范围扩展到了几种基于乙醇的医药产品的分析，即医药酊剂（染料）和消毒剂。在最近的工作中，我们还表明，将醇脱氢酶用作直接催化甲醇（或乙醇）燃料电池阳极部分的一个组成部分，可显著提高简单 DMFC 装置的性能，使其更适合通过该电池测量实际样品中的乙醇（或甲醇）。同时，我们还表明，DMFC 可以响应某些比甲醇和乙醇更复杂的有机化合物，并且这些化合物的分子中具有 R(R')CH-OH 基团。首先，使用简单的催化 DMFC 装置分析了医药染料的乙醇含量，结果准确且精密度良好。本论文展示了这些结果。此外，对商业变性酒精样品进行了详细的调查，结果表明由于所含添加剂存在一些干扰。其次，我们假设通过使用酶燃料电池，有可能改善某些抗生素（如亚胺培南）的测定，或者进行唾液和血清中乙醇含量的测定（模拟法医测试，与驾驶员的“呼气测试”相关）；尽管这在以前的论文中已经被假设过，但本研究首次进行了实验，获得了令人满意的结果。实际上，我们提出的所有目标都已实现，证实了酶（或非酶）DMFC 装置的巨大潜力。
