Non-Destructive Evaluation of Adulteration in Edible Oil Using Capacitance

Abstract

Premium edible oils like extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) produced in food and beverage fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industries may be subjected to economically motivated food adulteration and/or depreciate in quality from multi-oil processing in the same processing line. Current quality assurance methods (e.g. spectroscopy) are offline, invasive, costly, and slow making adulteration detection inefficient. Herein, a non-invasive capacitive detection scheme is used. The differences in the dielectric properties of mixed oils in a capacitive field form the basis for screening EVOO-filled containers non-invasively for adulteration without sample extraction. The sensor showed a fast response (100 ms) and good detection limits towards different adulterants (canola oil (46%), soy oil (17%) and castor oil (6%)), which is suitable for high-throughput inspection.