Monitoring the Sorbitol Fermentation by ATR/FT IR

Attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was applied to the monitoring of sorbitol batch fermentation.The characteristic strong absorption peaks of sorbitol and sorbose are 1 081cm -1 and 1 052cm -1 respectively.The absorbance of the fermentation broth at these wavenumbers directly reflected the variation of sorbitol and sorbose concentrations during the fermentation.A method for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the two components was first established.Both substrate (sorbitol) and product (sorbose) levels could be simultaneously measured.