Quantification of water content in water-ethanol solutions using photothermal transparent transducer method

摘要

In this letter we exhibit a series of results obtained using the technique of photothermal spectroscopy to determine the concentration of water in water-ethanol solutions. At low concentrations water is completely miscible with ethanol and particularly difficult to separate into parts in order to determine the complementary amount of each component, especially when considering measurements for such quantification in large scale. Ethanol has been promoted to a special class of product in the last decade due to its use as a renewable fuel for cars. However, it is of extreme importance to control the amount of water mixed in ethanol in order to avoid all sorts of erroneous possibilities regarding the indications for best performance of the engines. The results presented in this paper indicate the possibility of a new systematic setup to determine accurately the water content on water-ethanol solutions using photothermal techniques.