Radio Frequency Based Sensor for Adulteration Measurement in a Continuous Two Phase-Flow of Alcoholic Beverages

The adulteration in alcoholic beverage has costed thousands of lives and malnutrition’s specifically in developing countries. The existing characterization methods such as Gas Chromatography (GC) and Bioassay and Spectroscopy (NMR) offer insights into the chemical composition but the techniques are costlier and bulkier, hence the testing is evitable in a limited number of cases. This paper discloses the novel radio frequency (RF) technology based sensors and integrated into a device to detect the presence of ethanol in beverages. The proposed sensor is two phase flow sensor as the liquid can continuously move while being sensed by the sensor. The conducting patch of the RF sensing antenna is zig–zag shaped sensor. The sensor sends the signals at RF frequencies to the liquid. The RF signal gets scattered from liquid and receive back by transceiver with a specific time and phase delay. The proposed zig–zag sensor is portable as it is smaller in size (radiating structure has dimensions of 12 mm× 40 mm ). The substrates have a running polysiloxane microfluidic channel where the samples of alcoholic beverages are applied. The device operates at frequencies of 4.592 GHz and 6.458 GHz. The ethanol concentration is detected with the help of a radio frequency spectroscopy. The results are validated with characterization with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).