Detecting adulteration in mustard oil using low-frequency dielectric spectroscopy

Abstract

This paper presents a dielectric spectroscopy approach for analysing the quality of food products. This study aimed to detect the adulteration in mustard oil using dielectric spectroscopy in the 1 to 10 MHz frequency range at a temperature of 30 to 50 °C. The dielectric data were used to predict the adulteration in oils at the given frequency range. The finding indicates that using data analysis techniques can further improve the capacity of dielectric sensing to detect adulterated edible oil. Using MATLAB R2021a, linear relationships between the frequency and adulteration percentage variables were obtained to predict the dielectric constant and dielectric loss factor values. A paired sample t-test was used to analyse the effects of the frequency and adulteration on the dielectric parameters, with a significance level of 0.05 being set for the differences. Correlation coefficients (R2) > 0.96 were established using regression equations relating the dielectric constant, dielectric loss, and adulteration.

Keywords

• dielectric constant
• loss factor
• regression
• statistical analysis
• temperature