{
  "abstract": "Methanol adulteration in alcoholic beverages remains a recurrent public health problem. Instrumental methods for detecting methanol are not always available in field settings, while colorimetric methods often require toxic or hazardous reagents. Here we present AlcoLab, a proof-of-concept method for semiquantitative methanol screening in hydroalcoholic mixtures using a balance readable to 0.1 g and a 20-mL disposable syringe fitted with a 22-gauge needle. A ternary viscosity grid was fitted and selected using literature data (46-point model-selection benchmark: MAE ≈ 0.043 mPa·s; MAPE ≈ 2.47%), together with an empirical model linking syringe-flow response to viscosity. Under conditional blocked evaluation over 54 eligible replicates — including 30 measurements in commercial distilled spirits and commercial ethanol, 14 of which were methanol-spiked — the model yielded a MAE of 0.026 for the methanol mass fraction and flagged all 26 methanol-containing replicates, at a 26% false-positive rate over 84 negative predictions. Because the inversion was constrained to a ±2 percentage-point window around the nominal total alcohol content, these figures characterize the flow and inversion stages; all positives contained more than 16% methanol by mass, so performance at low methanol fractions remains to be established. The method is distributed as an open-source progressive web app (alcolab.org; AGPL-3.0) for methanol screening in suspected samples of distilled spirits and commercial ethanol solutions.•Reagent-free methanol screening by density, syringe-flow measurements, and ternary inversion.\n\n•Open-source AlcoLab application, with statistical interpretation and traffic-light classification.\n\n•Reproducible workflow with a ternary grid, rerunnable scripts, and supplementary videos.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Baru Tech, Brasília, DF, Brazil",
    "Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA), Centro de Ciências Exatas e Tecnologia (CCET), Campus Bacanga, São Luís, MA, Brazil",
    "Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA), Centro de Ciências de Chapadinha, Chapadinha, MA, Brazil"
  ],
  "article_type": "research article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 4,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Diego Mendes de Souza"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Pedro Augusto de Oliveira Morais"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Nayara Ferreira Santos"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Romério Rodrigues dos Santos Silva"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/b5vg9h8kg42v2.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1016/j.mex.2026.104211",
  "fulltext_url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13735008/",
  "id": "b5vg9h8kg42v2",
  "issns": [
    "2215-0161"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2026.104211",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "heading",
      "Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "1312|Identification and Quantification in Food"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7222967419",
  "pdf_url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215016126004279/pdf",
  "pmcid": "PMC13735008",
  "pmid": "42991014",
  "published": "2026-10-19",
  "publisher": "Elsevier",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/b5vg9h8kg42v2.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-09T12:20:47Z",
      "native_id": "PMC13735008",
      "source": "pmc",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2026.104211"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biochemistry",
      "origin": "openalex:1312|Identification and Quantification in Food",
      "subfield": "molecular-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "AlcoLab: a method for methanol screening using density and syringe-flow measurements, implemented as an open-source application",
  "title_text": "AlcoLab: a method for methanol screening using density and syringe-flow measurements, implemented as an open-source application",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-09T12:20:47Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/b5vg9h8kg42v2",
  "venue": "MethodsX",
  "versions": []
}