Measurement of moisture content in grains is an important matter for storage, processing and quality control. Heating is the ordinary method of measuring it, but this often involves waste of time. There are several measuring instruments available in the market, specially designed for quick moisture determination. Many problems still remain unsolved concerning the moisture meter for grains. Dielectric measurement of a small moisture content by extraction suggests one way of settlement. It is important, however, to choose a solvent with desirable properties. The authors have made experiments on various solvents and have finally found out that dioxane and tetrahydrofuran have the best fitted characteristics for the purpose. In our experiments, the dielectric measurement was made by means of a highly stabilized and sensitive reactance meter. When grains and each solvent were put into the same separating funnel, the moisture content was first absorbed from grains and then intermixed with the solvent. This mixed solution was poured into a measuring electrode which consists of a cylinder with a particular shielding plate. Since variation of dielectric constant of solution can be read on the dial degree of the condenser in the reactance meter, it follows that this dial degree numerically indicates the moisture content in grains. Similarly, small moisture contents in rice, wheat, sugar, salt, wood, silica gel, wool, green tea, sand and ammonium sulphate were measured by this method. From these data, the dielectric measurement method proves to be most desirable to determine the moisture content of such electrolytes as salt ammonium sulphate.
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