A Voltammetric Electronic Tongue for the Resolution of Ternary Nitrophenol Mixtures

Abstract

This work reports the applicability of a voltammetric sensor array able to quantify the content of 2,4-dinitrophenol, 4-nitrophenol, and picric acid in artificial samples using the electronic tongue (ET) principles. The ET is based on cyclic voltammetry signals, obtained from an array of metal disk electrodes and a graphite epoxy composite electrode, compressed using discrete wavelet transform with chemometric tools such as artificial neural networks (ANNs). ANNs were employed to build the quantitative prediction model. In this manner, a set of standards based on a full factorial design, ranging from 0 to 300 mg·L−1, was prepared to build the model; afterward, the model was validated with a completely independent set of standards. The model successfully predicted the concentration of the three considered phenols with a normalized root mean square error of 0.030 and 0.076 for the training and test subsets, respectively, and r ≥ 0.948.

Keywords

• electronic tongue
• artificial neural networks
• persistent pollutants
• nitrophenols