Abstract

Recently, Lidl had to set a recall action due to dangerous pieces of plastic found in the cheese products. The plastic shards, if swallowed, can cut the oral cavity or obstruct breathing. Current inspection techniques in the cheese industry are for the detection of metals using X-ray that does not offer a complete solution, as many foreign bodies can go undetected. This paper demonstrates the use of a portable real-time microwave sensing technique for the nondestructive detection of plastic in cheese. The electromagnetic (EM) patch antenna was designed and tested on five Cheddar cheese samples. Different sizes of plastic shards, 1 × 10 mm, 2 × 15 mm and 5 × 20 mm, were inserted into the samples, and measurements were taken with and without foreign objects. The initial results demonstrated that the patch antenna at 4GHz was able to detect and classify Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) shards with an R2 = 0.95. The initial results are promising, and further investigation will be undertaken to detect different shapes and types of foreign objects in food products.

Highlights

  • The detection of foreign objects during the food inspection process is critical to ensuring the quality of food products [1]

  • The full captured frequency spectrum (1–6 GHz, 4000 sweep points) from the sensor was scanned across using a bespoke LabVIEW program, namely, to identify a linear relationship between the sensor response (S11) and the plastic shards

  • The changes in the amplitude of the signal is thought to be caused by the change of the dielectric properties of the measured area of the cheese samples, i.e., the properties were altered by inserting various sizes of plastic shards, which have different chemical and dielectric properties compared to cheese samples

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Summary

Introduction

The detection of foreign objects during the food inspection process is critical to ensuring the quality of food products [1]. Foreign substances in food are detected mainly by using mechanical and optical methods as well as ultrasonic techniques. These techniques detect a large portion of foreign substances based on their mass (mechanical sieving), their color (optical method) and their surface density (ultrasonic detection) [3]. X-ray systems can reveal items made of hard nonmetallic materials, namely, stone, glass, bone, rubber and plastic, when embedded in food products. For soft materials (often organic materials) inside food products, accurate identification by X-ray systems is known to be difficult [4]. The recognition of differences between fragments and internal disorders in foods is still difficult

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