Simple and inexpensive microwave setup for industrial based applications: Quantification of flower honey adulteration as a case study
Uğur Cem Hasar, Hafize Hasar, Hamdullah Öztürk, Hüseyin Korkmaz, Yunus Kaya, Mehmet Akif Ozkaya, Amir Ebrahimi, Joaquim J. Barroso, Vahid Nayyeri, Omar M. Ramahi
Abstract
Abstract A simple and inexpensive microwave measurement setup based on measurements of magnitudes of transmission properties ( $$|S_{21}|_{\text {dB}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>|</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>S</mml:mi> <mml:mn>21</mml:mn> </mml:msub> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>|</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mtext>dB</mml:mtext> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> ) is proposed for industrial-based microwave aquametry (moisture or water content) applications. An easy-to-apply calibration procedure based on normalization is implemented to eliminate systematic errors in the measurement system. As a case study, we applied this setup for the quantification of water-adulteration in flower honey. After validating this system by distilled water and pure flower honey measurements, $$|S_{21}|_{\text {dB}}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>|</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>S</mml:mi> <mml:mn>21</mml:mn> </mml:msub> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>|</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mtext>dB</mml:mtext> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> measurements of the pure flower honey with various adulteration percentages ( $$\delta$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>δ</mml:mi> </mml:math> ) up to 9% are conducted to examine the performance of the measurement setup for quantification of water adulteration. A multi-dimensional fitting procedure is implemented to predict $$\delta$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mi>δ</mml:mi> </mml:math> using the proposed inexpensive microwave measurement setup. It is shown that it is possible to quantify an adulteration level with an accuracy better than $${\mp } 1$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>∓</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> % by the proposed measurement setup and the applied multi-dimensional fitting procedure.