A new concept for bioalcohol production control

Bioalcohol production is a well-established technology in the field of renewable energies. For optimization of the production process, automatic monitoring of at least the starting material (glucose) and the desired final product (ethanol) is advisable. Recently, we have shown that efficient biosensors can be produced by making use of enzymes fixed to the inner walls of etched swift heavy ion tracks in thin polymeric foils. Due to the large aspect ratio of ∼100-1,000 of such nanopores, enzymatic reaction products formed within them are considerably enriched, thus yielding a high sensitivity of the sensor. Usually these sensors exhibit semilogarithmic calibration curves. By combining two identical sensors-one being exposed to an encapsulated standard and the other one measuring the sample under consideration, one can always obtain wellcalibrated results under varying conditions. It is possible to determine the calibrated concentration ratio of two biomaterials- e.g., glucose and ethanol-by joining two such corresponding calibrated sensor systems with opposite polarity. Such a sensor system should facilitate the bioalcohol production control.