Determination of moisture content in oil palm fruits using a five-port reflectometer.

Sensors (Basel)

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Published: August 2012

AI Article Synopsis

  • The paper discusses the creation of a PC-based microwave five-port reflectometer to measure moisture content in oil palm fruits.
  • It highlights the system's components, including a PC, microwave source, and analog to digital converter, used to gather data via Agilent VEE software.
  • The study demonstrates that the reflectometer can accurately predict moisture content, with a phase measurement of the monopole sensor achieving a 5% accuracy compared to traditional drying methods.

Article Abstract

This paper presents the development of a PC-based microwave five-port reflectometer for the determination of moisture content in oil palm fruits. The reflectometer was designed to measure both the magnitude and phase of the reflection coefficient of any passive microwave device. The stand-alone reflectometer consists of a PC, a microwave source, diode detectors and an analog to digital converter. All the measurement and data acquisition were done using Agilent VEE graphical programming software. The relectometer can be used with any reflection based microwave sensor. In this work, the application of the reflectometer as a useful instrument to determine the moisture content in oil palm fruits using monopole and coaxial sensors was demonstrated. Calibration equations between reflection coefficients and moisture content have been established for both sensors. The equation based on phase measurement of monopole sensor was found to be accurate within 5% in predicting moisture content in the fruits when compared to the conventional oven drying method.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3231347PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s110404073DOI Listing

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