Dielectric characterization of ethanol and sugar aqueous solutions for potential halal authentication

A potential method for detection and discrimination of alcoholic containing drinks for halal authentication using dielectric properties has been investigated. Behaviors of several concentrations of ethanol solutions in water were studied for verification purpose. The addition of three types of sugar namely sucrose, glucose and fructose show the effect and changes to dielectric properties of solutions. Dielectric constant and dielectric loss factor for each samples were measured over the microwave frequency from 0.5 to 50 GHz. The results showed that dielectric properties manage to discriminate alcohol content until the lowest concentration studied of 0.5% in water mixture. Beyond this limit, solution is considered as alcoholic drinks

Alternative for rapid detection and screening of pork, chicken, and beef using dielectric properties in the frequency of 0.5 to 50 GHz

Dielectric property at high microwave frequency region has been utilized for possible rapid detection and screening of different types of meat, especially for halal authentication. This investigation focused on both raw and sterilized (processed) beef, pork, and chicken samples. Dielectric response that consists of dielectric constant and dielectric loss factor was measured over the range of 0.5 to 50 GHz. All raw and sterilized meat samples could be differentiated by the dielectric values. Two distinct peaks were observed only for both raw and sterilized pork samples at the frequency around 7.43 and 31.19 GHz. These peaks can potentially be linked to compounds that exist only in pork such as DNA, microbes, enzyme, proteins, amino acids, and many others. Dielectric values for sterilized samples were lower than raw samples due to molecule structural changes that occurred in the samples. The dielectric results promise a great potential of utilizing dielectric properties as a rapid on-site detection approach prior to subsequent laborious analysis

Dielectric properties for rapid on-site detection and screening of halal and non-halal foods

Halal verification has become increasingly important especially to the Muslim communities and very challenging nowadays due to the unavailability of a robust and rapid method to detect non-halal products. A potential method for detection and discrimination of products for halal authentication using dielectric properties has been investigated in this study. With regards to the interests of consumers particularly on food intake, this study focuses on several types of primary alcohol, commercial beverages and meat. The aim of this work is to characterize the dielectric response of alcohol and meat samples by using the dielectric properties, which is as potentially rapid on-site determination for halal and non-halal products. Measurements were made with frequency domain technique from 500 MHz to 50 GHz by means of an openended coaxial probe connected to Agilent Professional Network Analyzer (PNA-X) N5245A. For alcohol, the results show dielectric properties of alcohol can be detected until lowest concentration of 0.1% since standardization of alcohol content allowed by JAKIM is < 0.5 %. Frequency 10 GHz – 25 GHz was found to give good separation of graph for different concentration of ethanol solution. Data evaluation of several alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages were supported with Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) method in order to relate the polarity of volatile compounds and polarization effects in dielectric signal. Calculation of the parameter ε ∞, ε′s, ε′s - ε ∞ and H in the proposed Debye model combined with Higasi’s equation of relaxation time provided good agreement to the experimental data. Among the parameters, ε′s - ε ∞ (R2=0.9964) and H (R2=0.9857) gave the best regression line to be used as concentration detection. Raw beef, pork and chicken meat were characterized by dielectric over the same frequency range and two prominent peaks identified as Peak A (at 7 GHz) and Peak B (at 30 GHz) were found in pork and mix meat samples. Next, parameter of penetration depth, dp also showed good effects between heated pork and other meats since the correlation between moisture content and dp is higher (R2=0.98). The emergence of Peak B was continuous in sterilized pork, heated pork, porcine gelatin and pork in can. The consistency of this peak in all pork-based samples in this study shows it can be the potential marker to discriminate non-halal (pork) and halal meat since it was not seen in beef and chicken. It is believed there are some constituent species in pork sample does not destroyed even high temperature were subjected on it. This finding proves dielectric technique could be utilized for rapid on-site verification for any meat samples by detecting the significance Peak B at frequency of ~30 GHz. This technique also can reduce the analysis time and provide high accuracy result for initial screening purpose

Effect of heating time and temperature to the dielectric properties of pork and chicken in the range of 0.5 – 50 GHz

The interaction of materials with electromagnetic energy in microwave range provides dielectric constant (ε′) and loss (ε″) values that can be used to characterize food quantitatively. It offers a rapid, easy to use and low cost detection compared to current lab-based method. In this work, the effect of changing the heating time and temperature of the pork and chicken samples towards the dielectrics properties were investigated. All meat samples were mixed in a water and samples were heated (stewing) at different time and different temperature. After subjected to the heating process, the dielectric measurements for all samples were taken using VNA machine. ε′ values of chicken samples decreased with increasing frequency and increased with heating time. The higher ε′ values of 120 min chicken samples means longer time of heating gives higher potential for electrical energy storage in the flesh. The spectra of ε′ and ε′’ are dependent on frequency. On the other hand, different results were seen for pork samples. The significant peak was obtained at 31.19 GHz (ε′) and 32.18 GHz (ε″). Values of ε′ and ε″ of pork are highest at 120 min and lowest at 30 min. The dependency with frequency are similar to chicken samples. At different temperature, the dielectric constant of chicken show increment with the rising in temperature and decrease smoothly (with no significant peak) with the increasing of frequency. Pork exhibits similar trend to chicken whereby ε′ values decrease with increasing of frequency. Similarly a distinct peak like before was observed at 31.19 GHz (ε′) and 32.18 GHz (ε″). The above results indicated that at different temperature and different heating time, dielectric properties changed. Furthermore, only for pork sample, a distinct peak can be seen clearly and this help to further differentiate the samples from one another. These results show promising development in using dielectric properties as potential detection methods

Dielectric characterization of liquid containing low alcoholic content for potential halal authentication in the 0.5-50 GHz range

A potential method for detection and discrimination of alcoholic containing drinks for halal authentication using dielectric properties has been investigated. Behaviors of several pure alcohols, alcohol solution in water and also liquids with alcoholic contents were studied for verification purpose. Dielectric constant and dielectric loss factor for low concentration of ethanol solutions were measured over the microwave frequency from 0.5 to 50 GHz. The measurements were extended to several commercial alcoholic beverages. The results showed that dielectric properties manage to discriminate alcohol content until the lowest concentration studied of 0.5% in water mixture at frequency range of 10-25 GHz. Beyond this limit, solution is considered as alcoholic drinks