Noninvasive Interrogator

About

TECHNOLOGY NEED Several methods to identify the constituents of a liquid enclosed in a tightly sealed container have been developed. One popular method is the use of x-ray or gamma-ray high energy photons to penetrate bottles. This method is expensive and poses radiation hazards. Another method is to use Raman scattering from ultra-violent light sources. This method is expensive, slow and would not suffice for applications where time is of the essence. A few products utilize Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) technology. For this, the generation of sufficient magnetic fields is expensive. Thus, a cheap, high efficient method to detect the characteristics of liquid or air in a mixture is needed. INVENTION DESCRIPTION/SOLUTION Researchers at UT Arlington have developed a low-cost liquid interrogator that utilizes radio frequency (RF) energy to detect the characteristics of liquid or air in a bottle. A technique for dielectric spectroscopy utilizing self-resonance of a solenoid based sensor was developed. The sensor is designed to detect self-resonance frequencies and reflection coefficients of unknown liquid in a plastic bottle. Pattern recognition algorithms and classification methods were developed to characterize common liquids. A prototype has been developed and tested.  APPLICATIONS • Liquid identification • Quality control of fluidic products • Lubricant monitoring KEY BENEFITS • Contactless and non-invasive inquiry of solutions • Fast assessment • Low cost without consumables