Facile detection of oil adulteration using uv-visible spectroscopy coupled with chemometric analysis

Abstract

Engine and machine oils, better known as lubricant, is a fast-moving part within the motorcycle and automobile industries. Due to its high demand, these oils are often counterfeited by irresponsible people to get more profit. The thing most often done to adulterate oil is by mixing it with other low-quality or used oil. Here, we propose a simple analytical method to identify oil adulteration by using UV-Visible spectroscopy coupled with chemometric analysis. A number of 425 genuine and adulterated oils were used as samples. After appropriate dilution using n-hexane, the samples were analyzed by UV-Visible spectrophotometer followed by Principle Component Analysis (PCA) and Principle Component Regression (PCR) as part of the chemometric analysis. The results show that prediction samples were accurately classified into their corresponding groups with PCA scores of 49% and 27% for principal component 1 and 2, respectively. PLS model achieved a good prediction to detect lubricant oil adulteration, with R-square of predicted and reference samples were 0.9257 and 0.9204, respectively. The proposed method shows a promising alternative to the conventional chemical method using a more sophisticated instruments such as GC-MS and HPLC for oil or other organic compound identification.