Water Content Estimation in Granular Materials by Time Domain Reflectometry: a Key-note on Agro-Food Applications

Time domain reflectometry (TDK) is a well-established technique for the dielectric characterization of materials. In particular, over the last few years, the TDR has become the standard method for measuring soil water content. In this paper the authors study the feasibility of the adoption of the TDR technique for real-time monitoring of granular materials, particularly focused on the quality monitoring of agro-industrial and agro-food processes. In such a sector, in fact, the development of models for relating the dielectric properties of agro-food materials to their moisture content is a still-open issue. To fill this gap a comparative analysis has been developed in order to individuate the best calibration performance for each test case.