Chennai:
With the Supreme Court raising its concern about adulteration of milk, a research scholar from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) has developed a colour-based sensor (membrane), which changes colour when the milk gets spoilt.
Concerned over how people get fooled by milk traders who sell spoilt milk to people, Anshika Agarwal, a research scholar in the department of biotechnology at IIT-M decided to come up with a solution to help people buy good quality milk.
She started to work a year ago to solve the problem as part of her Ph.D research. “Milk often gets spoilt before the expiry date printed on the sachet. Keeping this in mind, I developed a sensor which is sensitive enough to detect milk spoilage at anearly stage,” said Agarwal, doing research in electrospinning (electrical charge draws very fine fibres from a liquid.).
The membrane (sensor) would be printed on the external wall connected by a small piece of sensor, which would sense the quality of milk and change the membrane’s colour in the sachet. “My sensor is cost-effective and easy to incorporate in packaging system. Prof T.S. Chandra of the Biotechnology department and Prof T.S. Natarajan from the Physics department have helped me a lot in developing this membrane,” she said.
K. Sekar, a milk vendor said,“People keep complaining about the poor quality of milk being supplied to them but now if this membrane is fixed, I am sure we will get to know the quality of milk when its supplied to us.
source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com / Deccan Chronicle / Home> News> Current Affairs / DC / by N. Arun Kumar / July 07th, 2013