Delhi Public School Harni

ACADEMIC SESSION : 2018 – 2019

Chemistry Investigatory
Project

Topic : Study of adulterants in foodstuffs

Submitted by: Chinmay Dalal

Class : 12 A
Rollno:
 CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project titled
“Study of adulterants in foodstuffs” prepared
by Chinmay Dalal has been submitted to the
chemistry department of Delhi Public School
Harni. The project has been performed under
the supervision of Anant Sir and Piyush Sir.

Chemistry School
Teacher’s signature Stamp

Examiner’s signature
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I Chinmay Dalal, sincerely thank Mr.

Anant Panchal, our chemistry teacher for
guiding me in the project. I also thank
Mr. Piyush, chemistry lab assistant, for
his invaluable guidance, constant
encouragement, constructive comments,
and sympathetic attitude and immense
motivation, which has sustained my
efforts at all stages of this project work.
 INDEX

1) Introduction
2) Common Methods Of Detection Of Adulterants
3) Material/Chemicals Required
4) Procedure
5) Observations
6) Conclusions
7) Bibliography
 INTRODUCTION

In the past few decades, adulteration of food has become

one of the serious problems. Consumption of adulterated
food causes serious diseases like cancer,
diarrhea,asthama,ulcers etc. Majority of the used by

shopkeepers are cheap substitutes easily available.

For example ,adulterants in fats ,oils and butter are paraffin

wax castor oil and hydrocarbons. Red chilli powder is mixed
with brick powder and pepper is mixed with dried papaya
seeds.

These can be easily identified by simple chemical tests.

COMMON METHODS OF DETECTION OF
ADULTERANTS

1. Chilli powder

Test for your safety :

Mix a spoonful of chilli powder in a glass full of

water. If you spot a formation of coloured water
extract, it is because the chilli powder is
adulterated.
 2. Ghee

Test for your safety :

Add 1 ml of water to a test tube containing about

0.5 g of ghee and bring the mixture to boil. Once it
cools, add a drop of iodine (or iodine tincture
solution) to it. If the final output is blue in colour,
then it is adulterated with starchy substances.
 3. Sugar

Test for your safety :

Unadulterated sugar, when added to a glass of

water, will sink directly to the bottom. But if it has
chalk powder in it, the adulterants will remain at the
surface of the water.
4. Black pepper

Test for your safety :

Add a few corns of pepper to alcohol. The pure

corns will stay afloat whereas the pappaya seeds
will sink.
 Materials/Chemicals Required

To do this experiment we need the following materials/

chemicals:

1. Test tubes
2. Concentrated HCl, H2SO4 and HNO3
3. Furfural
4. Acetic anhydride
5. Acetic acid
6. Alcoholic solution of α-naphthol
7. Dilute HCl
8. Dilute HNO3
9. KI Solution

Procedure

The experiment will be performed in 3 Parts for sugars and spices

respectively.

Experiment 1 :
Sugar is usually contaminated with washing soda and other insoluble substances

which are detected as follows:

(i) Adulteration of various insoluble substances in sugar

Take small amount of sugar in a test tube and shake it with little
water. Pure sugar dissolves in water but insoluble impurities do
not dissolve.

(ii) Adulteration of chalk powder, washing soda in sugar

To small amount of sugar in a test tube, add a few drops of dil.

HC1. Brisk effervescence of CO2 shows the presence of chalk
powder or washing soda in the given sample of sugar.
Experiment 2 :
Common adulterants present in chilli powder, turmeric powder and pepper are red

coloured lead salts, yellow lead salts and dried papaya seeds respectively. They are

detected as follows :

(iii) Adulteration of red lead salts in chilli powder :

To a sample of chilli powder add dil. HNO3. Filter the solution

and add 2 drops of potassium iodide solution to the filtrate.
Appearance of yellow ppt. indicates the presence of lead salts in
chilli powder.

(iv) Adulteration of yellow lead salts to turmeric powder :

To a sample of turmeric powder add conc. HC1. Appearance of

magenta color show the presence of yellow oxides of lead in
turmeric powder.

(v) Adulteration of brick powder in red chilli powder :

Add small amount of given red chilli powder in beaker containing

water. Brick powder settles at the bottom while pure chili powder
floats over water.

(vi) Adulterants of dried papaya seeds in pepper :

 Add small amount of pepper to a beaker containing water and
stir with a glass rod. Dried papaya seeds being lighter float over
water while pure pepper settles at the bottom.

Experiment 3 :
Common adulterants present in ghee and oil are paraffin wax ,hydrocarbons, dyes

and argemone oil.These are detected as follows :

(vii) Adulteration of vegetable ghee in desi ghee (Bandouin test) :

T
Take small amount of desi ghee in a test tube and add to it 1ml of HCl
and 2-3 drops of 2% alcoholic solution of furfural. Shake the contents
vigorously. Appearance of red colour in the acid layer shows that
vegetable ghee has been mixed as an adulterant to desi ghee.

(viii) Adulteration of praffin wax and hydrocarbon in vegetable ghee :

Heat small amount of vegetable ghee with acetic acid anhydride. Droplets
of oil floating on the surface of unused acetic anhydride indicates
presence of wax or hydrocarbon.

(ix) Adulteration of dyes in fat :

Heat 1ml of fat with a mixture of 1ml of conc. sulphuric acid and 4mL of
acetic acid. Appearance of pink or red colour indicates presence of dye in
fat.

(x) Adulteration of argemone oil in edible oil :

 To small amount of oil in a test tube, add few drops of conc. HNO3 and
shake. Appearance of red colour in the acid layer indicates presence of
argemone oil.

OBSERVATIONS

Experiment 1:
(i) There were no insoluble impurities in the sugar sample.

(ii) On adding HCl, brisk effervescence of CO2 was observed.Thus, there were
traces of chalk powder and/or washing soda.

Experiment 2:
(iii) There was no yellow precipitate observed.

(iv) No magenta colour was observed.

(v) There was no brick powder in red chilli.

(vi) There were dried papaya seeds in pepper.

Experiment 3 :
(vii) There was no appearance of red colour in Bandouin test.

(viii) There were no droplets of oil floating on the surface.

(ix) There was no appearance of pink colour.

 (x) There was no appearance of red colour in acid layer.

Conclusions
From the experiments performed, we conclude that:

(i) The sugar sample was not adulterated with insoluble impurities.

(ii) The sugar sample was contaminated with chlak powder / washing
soda.

(iii) Chilli powder was not adulterated with lead salts.

(iv) Turmeric was not adulterated with lead salts.

(v) Chilli powder was adulterated with brick powder.

(vi) Pepper was adulterated with driesd papaya seeds.

(vii) Desi ghee was not adulterated with vegetable ghee.

(viii) Vegetable ghee was not adulterated with paraffin wax / hydrocarbon.

(ix) There were no dyes in the fat sample.

(x) The sample of edible oil did not contain argemone oil.
 Sources/Bibliography:

(i) NCERT Textbook

(ii) WikiPedia

(iii) Comprehensive Practical Chemistry-XII

(iv) The Internet