volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Moisture measurement in industrial applications, both in liquid and solid materials, presents a significant challenge. In the field of biofuels, this becomes even more critical. Among the various approaches developed for this purpose, indirect electromagnetic techniques have emerged as a valuable tool for accurately estimating moisture content. These techniques utilize the complex dielectric permittivity ε as an intermediary parameter, which is influenced by the water content in the material. As a first step toward this purpose, a 1''5/8 two-port coaxial transmission cell, developed at LNE-CETIAT, was studied to make dielectric measurements on liquids. Characterization and validation steps were requested to demonstrate the accuracy of this cell. For this purpose, an intra-laboratory comparison has been performed first at LNE-CETIAT using the 1''5/8 cell and the EpsiMu® coaxial cell - a fully validated reference tool. Then, an inter-laboratory comparison with the Fresnel Institute has been performed using a coaxial probe and another EpsiMu®cell. The measurements were carried out under identical ambient conditions, using liquid reference materials. In this work, the performance of the developed cell in the frequency band [0,1-1,1] GHz has been validated, as well as the accuracy of the three electromagnetic techniques used. The results of the experiments confirm the effectiveness of the 1''5/8 cell developed at LNE-CETIAT for measuring the dielectric properties of liquids.

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Dr. Bayan Tallawi

Dr. Floriane Sparma

Dr. Eric Georgin

Professor Pierre Sabouroux