Simple and inexpensive microwave setup for industrial based applications: Quantification of flower honey adulteration as a case study

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Hasar U. C., Hasar H., Ozturk H., Korkmaz H., KAYA Y., Ozkaya M. A., ...More

Scientific Reports, vol.14, no.1, 2024 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus) identifier identifier identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 14 Issue: 1
  • Publication Date: 2024
  • Doi Number: 10.1038/s41598-024-59346-3
  • Journal Name: Scientific Reports
  • Journal Indexes: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Scopus
  • Keywords: Adulteration, Cheaper, Honey, Instrument, Microwave, Simple calibration, Water
  • Open Archive Collection: AVESIS Open Access Collection
  • Ataturk University Affiliated: No

Abstract

A simple and inexpensive microwave measurement setup based on measurements of magnitudes of transmission properties (|S21|dB) 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, |S21|dB measurements of the pure flower honey with various adulteration percentages (δ) 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 δ using the proposed inexpensive microwave measurement setup. It is shown that it is possible to quantify an adulteration level with an accuracy better than ∓1% by the proposed measurement setup and the applied multi-dimensional fitting procedure.