Advanced automation of a flow injection analysis system for quality control of olive oil through the use of a distributed expert system

A new methodology-based on the combination of flow injection analysis and a distributed expert system-is proposed for the on-line chemical quality control of olive oil. This knowledge-based system is in charge of carrying out the flow injection determination of total acidity, peroxide value, and UV spectrophotometric measurements (K-232 and K-270), according to EU legislation. On the other hand, the expert system, apart from supervising the correct functioning of the system (devices, clogging, analysis frequency, and so on), performs the definite classification of the analyzed oil by evaluating the oil quality from the values yielded, according to previously established specifications. Satisfactory results have been obtained in the application of this approach to different samples of Spanish olive oil along the storage process. The distributed expert system also allows for the remote control of the analysis process owing to the interconnection of the different nodes by means of a communication network. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.