Electrical resistance of a nut

Thread Starter

speekergeek

Joined Mar 6, 2013
2
Hi, everyone.

First post here, sorry if it is in the wrong section.

I am doing some research for work, my task is to find the electrical resistance of an Almond.

I tried a megger and got no joy.

I figured because of the high oil content it is a good insulator.

We heat these nuts in an RF field, 27.12 Mhz to be exact, to roast or dry them.

So my question if it is answerable, is how do I gauge the resistance of the almond in an RF field?

The circuit is a free oscillator vacuum tube type, 50Kw with several RF transformer type points so it is very difficult to gauge the potential on the electrodes.

I am at a loss and would be thankful for any help in the matter.

Any free oscillating RF experts out there?

Preferably with either wood glue drying, or textile drying experience.

Although the principles should be the same.

Thanks!


Mike

EDIT:
The almonds, wood, textiles, etc.. in my understanding make the circuit "work" by providing a high ESR capacitor as the load. The Series resistance being the nuts. there has to be a way.....
 
Last edited:

ErnieM

Joined Apr 24, 2011
8,377
During the 80's several million dollars went down the drain researching various nut harvesting methods. No matter what was tried it was impossible to accurately detect the targets. Because... sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.
 

Ron H

Joined Apr 14, 2005
7,063
Measuring the resistance of something at RF frequencies is similar to measuring the equivalent series resistance of a capacitor. You can't do it with DC, because the impedance of the capacitance is infinite at DC.
In principle, you could use a network analyzer, but a network analyzer makes point contact to two terminals. You are subjecting the almond to a non-contacting field.
You might find an RF engineer, or even a good radio amateur (ham), who could tell you how to measure the effective resistance.
 
Hi there,

I used to design RF heating stuff for a living a while ago..

As mentioned above, what you want to measure is not the DC resistance of the nut but its Loss Tangent. In basic terms, your nut forms part of the dielectric of a capacitor when it is in the electric field of the RF cavity. Contunually reversing this E field is a lossy process (like how a squash ball isn't a lossless so it gets warm). The effect of this is that the electric permittivity is a complex number with a reactive and resistive component.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_tangent

An excellent book that covers loads of stuff on dielectric heating is 'Foundations of Electroheat' by A.C.Metaxas. I'd highly recommend it.

Alternatively, someone has already done the hard work for you..

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1537511003000424

This paper shows how the dielectric properties of almonds and other products can be measured and has a table of results. I'm sure with some searching you could find other papers with results for dielectric properties of almonds and compare them.

Be careful with that machine, RF burns hurt!
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
30,720
Check out Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT). I have done EIT on tree trunks. We do scans at different frequencies and measure both amplitude and phase in order to determine impedance.
 
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