Microwave-based non-invasive method for determining fat and moisture content in edible oils

Nutrition and general health are greatly enhanced by edible oils, which are essential parts of the everyday human diet. The need for quick, accurate, and non-destructive quality testing methods has increased due to the increasing prevalence of adulteration and quality degradation in edible oils. Traditional techniques for assessing edible oils mostly depend on physical inspection and biochemical studies, which are often time-consuming and labor-intensive and may change the molecular makeup and structure of the test materials by adding chemical reagents. Microwave sensing is a prospective alternative for quality assessment since every edible substance has distinct molecular structures, dielectric qualities, and absorption characteristics. By passing microwave signals through a liquid dielectric cell containing oil samples and comparing the outcomes with those of traditional biochemical techniques, the quality of edible oils was examined in this work. The waveguide approach was used to assess the electrical characteristics of several edible oils in the X-band frequency range of 8–12 GHz, including the attenuation constant, dielectric constant, dielectric loss factor, penetration depth, and permittivity. Variations in moisture and fat content have a major impact on oil microwave reactivity, according to experimental data. The suggested waveguide-based microwave technique is a quick, non-invasive, and efficient way to evaluate the quality of edible oil and identify adulteration since it has low attenuation loss, no environmental impact, and high sensitivity.