Measurement System for Lossy Capacitive Sensors: Application to Edible Oils Quality Assessment

This paper aimed to develop a portable, low-cost, and easy-to-use measurement system for oil quality degradation assessment. The main two chemical parameters affected by frying are the total polar compounds (TPC) and free fatty acids. The system should characterize the change of chemical parameters by measuring the changes in its dielectric parameters. The dielectric parameters, relative permittivity, and conductivity are measured by measuring the capacitance and resistance of a capacitive sensor dipped in oil. The main challenges are that the corresponding changes of the capacitance and resistance are very small and the presence of stray effects. For this reason, the measurement system should be able to detect changes in capacitance and resistance with high resolution and with good immunity to stray effects. The proposed measurement system is based on the conversion of impedance to voltage and time and combining, therefore, having two measurement methods in one circuit. In this way, it is possible to measure the dielectric and resistive parameters and not only the relative permittivity as was done in previous works. The results showed a strong correlation between the chemical and electrical parameters with a coefficient of determination in the range of 0.9.