Thermal analysis is becoming increasingly important in food production and in the testing of food for health studies.
In particular, the carbon and fat content of various products is very often the focus of analytical interest. Butter and margarine are typical examples where the nature of the fats they contain is not always easy to determine.
Therefore, the DSC method can be used as a quality control tool in production and research.
In this application, the new chip DSC was used to measure various fat-containing samples.
The DSCsignal is generally generated by heating a pan containing a sample and an empty reference pan with the same heat source and subtracting the heat flux signals of the two pans from each other, resulting in endothermic or exothermic peaks when the sample temperature changes due to thermal effects.
The Chip-DSC integrates all essential components of the DSC—the furnace, sensor, and electronics—into a miniaturized housing. The chip assembly incorporates the heater and temperature sensor into a chemically inert ceramic assembly with a metallic heater and temperature sensor.
As a result, the chip DSC enables very fast heating and cooling rates while maintaining high resolution, accuracy, and reproducibility.
The results of a DSC measurement can be used as a fingerprint model for substance identification in quality control, but also for determining enthalpies of reaction, such as in phase transitions.
