Determination of the complex permittivity of cherry, pulped, green, and roasted coffee using a planar dielectric platform and a coaxial probe between 0.3 and 6 GHz

ABSTRACT

The complex permittivity for four processing stages of coffee: coffee cherries, pulped coffee, green coffee, and roasted coffee was obtained and divided into two groups. The wet group is constituted by cherry and pulped coffee, and the dry group by green and roasted coffee. The wet group presented a dielectric constant between 64 and 43, and a loss factor between 34 and 12. The dry group has values oscillating between 1.55 and 1.1 for the dielectric constant, and 0.037 and 0.005 for the loss factor. The permittivity difference between the wet and dry groups suggests the dependence of the coffee permittivity on the water content, along with the presence of other polar compounds. A decaying response for the dielectric constant was seen, with a proportion of 30:1 from the wet to the dry group. The loss factor presents a convex response for the wet group and a constant response for the dry group with a factor of 500 to a 100:1 from the wet to the dry group. A set of 18 samples at every stage was used to estimate the moisture content by partial least squares. The Meyer and Schilz coefficient was used for these models, that resulted in prediction errors of 2.8% and 3.8% when compared to the stage mean moisture content for the wet group. The dry group resulted in errors of 21% and 89.7%. These results indicate that the complex permittivity of coffee is capable of estimating physicochemical variables as the moisture content of the beans at distinct processing stages.

KEYWORDS:

• Dielectric spectroscopy
• assessment of coffee processing
• PLS modeling
• coffee bulk density
• moisture content estimation

Acknowledgments

Physical analysis of coffee and sample collection was performed by Erika Tatiana Cortés Macías, Dayana Alejandra Orozco Blanco, and Wilmer Licerio Ladino Garzón from the Cesurcafé group, at Universidad Surcolombiana. Dielectric measurements (i.e., coaxial probe and platform) were performed by William Romero, from Universidad de los Andes.

Additional information

Funding

This project is funded by the Colombian Science Council - Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación [617-2014] (National doctoral student formation program) and “Proyecto CAFES” [120471551893].