A system and method for detection of sulfate ions in environmental and food samples

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and a method to detect the presence of sulfate ions in liquid samples comprising carbon quantum dots (CQD) with barium serving as a probe to detect the sulfate ions in liquid samples, a plurality of spectrophotometers, a zeta sizer, a plurality of glass vials to hold the samples of different liquids, a mobile computing device having a camera to capture the images of glass vials, a chemical sensing module, and a computing device-based application to determine the intensity of colors in the sample wherein the system integrated with the probe is used to record the images, and process them in the computer-based application for estimation of RGB signal intensity and selectively interact with target analytes (SO42-) leading to changes in their fluorescence emission thereby detecting the presence of (SO42-) in the targeted samples. The recovery percentage of SO₄²⁻ ions detected from the liquid samples through the integration of the method and system ranges from 90.0% to 101.1% thereby indicating good accuracy.