Abstract—Recent development in microwave-assisted processing of biomass materials has significantly created a need for fundamental study to understand the dielectric properties of these biomass feedstock, which could give further insight about interaction between microwave energy and biomass. In the present study, dielectric properties of oil palm trunk (OPT) core were investigated using an open-ended coaxial probe method. The dielectric properties of OPT core were determined as a function of controlling factors such as microwave frequency, biomass moisture content and fibre directions (radial, tangential and cross section). The results showed that dielectric constant of OPT core was decreased with the increasing of frequency. For dielectric loss and loss tangent, a similar trend was observed but only at low frequency (<1.8 GHz). The dielectric constant and loss of OPT core were positively correlated with its moisture content for all fibre directions. In terms of magnitude of dielectric constant and loss, radial direction showed the highest value compared to cross section and tangential which suggests radial direction has the optimum electromagnetic energy absorption and conversion.
Index Terms—Oil palm trunk core, dielectric constant, dielectric loss, loss tangent.
W. S. Jie, H. Abdullah, N. Yusof are with the Biology Department, Faculty of Science and Mathematics, University Pendidikan Sultan Idris, 35900, Tg. Malim, Perak, Malaysia (e-mail: hanisom@fsmt.upsi.edu.my).
Z. Abbas is with the Physics Department, Faculty of Science, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
[PDF]
Cite:Wun Shun Jie, Hanisom Abdullah, Norjan Yusof, and Zulkifly Abbas, "Dielectric Properties of Oil Palm Trunk Core," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 422-427, 2015.
