Discriminating Various Edible Gelatin with a Chemical Oscillator

Some edible gelatin (EG) always constitutes a major component of the final product and is usually of high price, which makes it necessary to discriminate such EG from the cheap counterparts. In this study, we present a discriminating methodology based on oscillatory chemical reactions, and apply the method to discriminate between the donkey-hide gelatin samples from a particular manufacturer (i.e., Dong’e Ejiao Co., Ltd.) and other similar EG products. By measuring the open circuit potential (OCP), we are able to obtain the perturbations brought by the gelatin samples to an acetone-MnSO 4 -KBrO 3 chemical oscillator. With the help of principle component analysis, we can extract the peculiarities of different EG products from the OCP data and further differentiate among the samples made of various raw material or produced by distinct manufacturers. The whole workflow requires little sample preprocessing but gives satisfactory discrimination sensitivity and accuracy.