Pedro José Fito
Universidad Politécnica de Valencia
Spain
Title: Dielectric properties for predicting the state of water in meat products during drying process
Biography
Biography: Pedro José Fito
Abstract
Drying is considered the most expensive operation due to the time and control requested, so it is necessary to optimize this stage of the production process. Therefore, dielectric properties measurement appears as a promising tool for on-line control in meat industry. Dielectric properties measurements have been performed on raw and dried Longissimus dorsi pork samples. The dielectric spectra were measured with an Agilent 85070E open-ended coaxial probe connected to an Agilent E8362B Vector Network Analyser in the frequency range from 500 MHz to 20 GHz. The results of this research allowed to conclude that there exists a direct relationship between the dielectric loss factor at 20 GHz with regard to the number of water molecules of sample surface. With this technique, it was also possible to obtain the relation between aw and moisture of meat, concluding that the loss tangent in γ-dispersion is a fast tool for monitoring the evolution of the drying process.