A Low Cost Compact Measurement System Constructed Using a Smart Electrochemical Sensor for the Real-Time Discrimination of Fruit Ripening

Abstract

Ethylene as an indicator for evaluating fruit ripening can be measured by very sensitive electrochemical gas sensors based on a high-resolution current produced by a bias potential applied to the electrodes. For this purpose, a measurement system for monitoring ethylene gas concentrations to evaluate fruit ripening by using the electrochemical ethylene sensor was successfully developed. Before the electrochemical ethylene sensor was used to measure the ethylene gas concentrations released from fruits, a calibration curve was established by the standard ethylene gases at concentrations of 2.99 ppm, 4.99 ppm, 8.01 ppm and 10 ppm, respectively, with a flow rate of 0.4 L·min−1. From the calibration curve, the linear relationship between the responses and concentrations of ethylene gas was obtained in the range of 0–10 ppm with the correlation coefficient R2 of 0.9976. The micropump and a novel signal conditioning circuit were implemented in this measurement, resulting in a rapid response in detecting ethylene concentrations down to 0.1 ppm in air and in under 50 s. In this experiment, three kinds of fruits—apples, pears and kiwifruits—were studied at a low concentration (under 0.8 ppm) of trace ethylene content in the air exhaled by fruits. The experimental results showed that a low cost, compact measurement system constructed by using an electrochemical ethylene sensor has a high sensitivity of 0.3907 V·ppm−1 with a theoretical detection limit of 0.413 ppm, and is non-invasive and highly portable.

A Research on Fruit Maturity Detection Techniques

“…Sa et al [4] Colour(RGB) and Near infrared(NIR) technique 4 Hasanuddin et al [9] Ehylene gas detection 5 Hasegawa et al [22] (Sic -FET) gas sensors for detecting ethylene gas 6 Mustaffa et al [7] Open Cv histogram 7…”

A Si FET-type Gas Sensor with Pulse-driven Localized Micro-heater for Low Power Consumption

“…Accordingly, various types of gas sensors have been studied and developed constantly. Among them, four representative types of gas sensors are introduced here: resistor-type [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], optical [14][15][16], electrochemical [17][18][19], and field-effect transistor-type (FET-type) gas sensors [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Resistor-type gas sensor is one of the most studied types of gas sensors.…”

A Smart Rig for Calibration of Gas Sensor Nodes

“…Gas sensors may also be used in electronic olfaction schemes for odor detection and identification [7][8][9][10]. Gas sensors may even be used to evaluate fruit ripening [11,12]. Different types of gas sensors are used for detecting hazardous gases in mines, petrochemical installations, and other applications [13][14][15][16].…”