For a large variety of food products, the moisture content can be indirectly determined by measuring their dielectric properties. In the case of coffee, the permittivity knowledge can be applied to determine the moisture content indirectly or for online moisture meters in automatic control of coffee dryers. However, there is little data on the dielectric properties of roasted ground coffee near the 2.45 GHz ISM band. In this contribution, the permittivity was measured versus temperature, bulk density, and moisture content. A resonant technique based on a coaxial microwave cavity was employed to obtain the complex permittivity as a function of those magnitudes near the 2.45 GHz ISM band. In addition, the permittivity of the coffee particle kernel has been estimated from a complex refractive index mixture equation, thus calculating the permittivity of the coffee particle kernel from the permittivity values of the mixture air-coffee (ground coffee) at different bulk densities. The results showed that both dielectric constant and loss factor increase for increasing temperature, bulk density, and moisture content values. Furthermore, expressions fitting the experimental data were provided, thereby facilitating the estimation of the values throughout the studied temperature, bulk density, and moisture content ranges.
Permittivity of materials is of utmost importance for microwave applicators’ design and to predict high-frequency dielectric heating of materials. In the case of aromatic plant biomass, however, there are few data that help researchers design microwave applicators for microwave-assisted extraction. In this work, the permittivity of cypress and rockrose biomass samples were measured versus temperature, density, and moisture content. A resonant technique based on a coaxial bi-reentrant microwave cavity was employed to obtain the complex permittivity of biomass samples as a function of those magnitudes around the 2.45 GHz ISM frequency. The obtained measurements show that large variations for permittivity values can be found with moisture content and density changes for both cypress and rockrose biomass. Temperature also has effects in a lesser degree, although it has an important influence on the cypress biomass loss factor. Polynomial expressions fitting the experimental data were provided in order to facilitate the estimation of intermediate values, which were not explicitly arranged in this work. As a general trend, the permittivity of cypress and rockrose biomass increases with increasing values of moisture content and density, whereas the biomass loss factor increases when temperature rises.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.