Determination of Adulteration of Honey Syrup Using Open Ended Coaxial Probe Sensor at Microwave Frequency

Abstract

Food quality assurance is becoming increasingly important in food processing industry as expectations from the consumers and competitions among food manufacturers continue to grow. For this singular reason, this research work is primarily aimed at studying the dielectric characteristics of pure honey and adulterated ones with a view to determine honey that has been adulterated. In this work, permittivity of pure honey, distilled water and honey—distilled water syrup mixtures with water content from 0% to 80% was studied from 1 to 20 GHz with open-ended coaxial-line sensor and a network analyzer at room temperature. The input reflection coefficient obtained from the vector network analyzer (Agilent 85,071) is then used to calculate and correlate the complex permittivity measured for the water and mixtures. Results showed that the die-lectric constants of all samples decreased with increasing frequency, while the pure honey had lower dielectric constant than distilled water but the mixture of water and honey increased with increases in water content. The maximum loss factor decreased with increasing water content.