Nadia Ayala

The research i am currently doing is in the area of aroma analysis. The lemon aroma was collected as a set of aromas found in coffee. These aromas were then produced using various methods to obtain the specific smells that waft out of coffee. Through the use of Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS), one is able to see the different compounds within the liquid. Given the details in the pamphlet on how the lemon aroma was synthesized, I hypothesized that the element of limonene was present within the aroma sample. Using the Solid-Phase Microextraction (SPME) instrument as the means of sampling, it was shown that there was a high presence of the limonene in the sample, with variations when using different methods of analysis, as well as the common presence of other substances including ɑ-pinene and camphene. In future studies i wish to perfect the methods of analysis in order to find the most prominent compounds within other aromas as well as in unknown solutions.