A Simplified and Portable Capacitance Sensor to Measure Moisture Content of Paddy

Authors : Divya Nathk, Prabhu Ramanathan

Pages : 821-829

View : 14 | Download : 7

Publication Date : 2018-09-01

Article Type : Research

Abstract :The moisture content in agricultural products will affect the quality and safety storage of it. Fungi development happens if the moisture content is not optimum. This paper presents a non – destructive, simple, fast and low cost interface circuit to measure the moisture content of paddy grains heated in different temperature. The arrangement used is a high precision impedance converter. Ceramic capacitors of different values were used to standardize the measuring circuit. Using this circuit, moisture content of representative standard grown samples was measured and dielectric constant was calculated.  A moisture meter developed using this circuit can be implemented to measure the moisture content of any grains. The paper discusses the working principle, technique, methodology and experimental set up used and the results obtained.
Keywords : Moisture content measurement, non-destructive, parallel plate capacitor sensor and grains.