Amir Reza SADROLHOSSEINI, Mohd Maarof MOKSIN^*, W. Mahmood Mat YUNUS, Zainal Abidin TALIB, and Mahnaz M. ABDI¹

Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
¹Institute of Tropical Forestry and Forest Products (INTROP), University Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

(Received February 2, 2011; Accepted April 13, 2011)

Copper corrosion is one of the important parameters used for evaluating the quality of biodiesel. In this work, a polypyrrole–chitosan sensing layer was utilized for the detection of Cu^{2 +} in biodiesel using the surface plasmon resonance technique. With the sensitivity of this sensor being about 0.1 ppm, different corrosion levels could be recognized in samples that were classified as class 1a according to the standard copper strip test.

Key words: surface plasmon resonance sensor, biodiesel, corrosion, polypyrrole–chitosan

^*E-mail address: maarof@science.upm.edu.my