Hermes N-Sens Alocoholmeter is a special variant of general purpose N-sens-handheld raman spectrometer. It utilizes all the functions of raman spectrometer and adds the capability of analyzing alcohol quality.

The chemical form of alcohol in almost all alcoholic beverages is ethyl alcohol. It is either introduced to the beverage at some specific point of production cycle or fermented naturally.  But in either case ethyl alcohol is the main compound of beverage but most of the times it also possess the majority of the production costs. There is also a chance that, with improper fermentation conditions, other forms of alcohol which are slightly different than ethyl alcohol may be formed.

The closest compound to ethyl alcohol is called methyl alcohol which has almost same odor and flavor so impossible for us to differentiate without analytical tests. The production of methyl alcohol is quite easy comparing to ethyl alcohol therefore the price is dramatically lower. And it is impossible to distinguish these two by simply tasting. The only problem is, unlike ethyl alcohol which is totally safe to consume under defined conditions; methyl alcohol possesses a very high danger for humans. The risks involve alcohol poisoning with a very high mortality rate depending the consumption rate. Even if the amount of consumed methyl alcohol is ~100 times less than safe limits of ethyl alcohol, still the risk of permanent blindness and kidney failure are quite high.

Apart from alcoholic beverages, ethyl alcohol is also excessively used in medicine, food preservation and many other industrial process. The improper use of methyl alcohol possesses the same risks defined above. In these cases, victim may even not be aware of the consumption of alcoholic compounds.

The amount of methyl alcohol and ethyl/methyl alcohol ratio which possess threat are defined by organizations such as WHO, FDA etc. N-sens alcoholmeter lets you know if there is even a trace amount of methyl alcohol in any liquid, without opening the bottle. No sampling is required for this test; no damage is made to bottle with point-and-shoot technique. And if there is a trace of methyl alcohol; by using the simple method developed by Hermes scientists, you can quantitatively define the amount of ethyl and methyl alcohol levels independently.

•      The Hermes method is based on proven technology of internal reference
•      The measurement period is 30s for qualitive determination of methyl alcohol
•      10s scan time is enough for quantitative determination
•      0.2% (v/v) limit of detection for methyl alcohol
•      100% accurate results for risk possessing levels
•      Totally field deployable, no need for a scientific lab
•      No need to scientific background to perform tests or evaluate results
•      No need to additional equipment, pretreatment or cleaning
•      Only 900µl of sample is used for quantitative analysis
•      Cost of a single test as low as 10 cents

Kit Contents

• N-Sens 785nm handheld raman spectrometer with point-and-shoot sample head and cuvette holder, preinstalled with general purpose detection/analysis software
• Alcoholmeter application specific software integrated module (preinstalled)
• Set of disposable sterile glass cuvettes
• 0-1000 µl adjustable micropipette
• Set of disposable sterile pipette tips
• Bulk internal reference solution in sealed package
• Backup battery
• Backup battery charger
• 220V wall mount and 12V car battery charger adapter
• Pc software suite cd for further offline analysis and data storage