Apparatus and method for measuring the permittivity of a substance
First Claim
1. An apparatus for measuring in situ the complex permittivity of a substance, the apparatus comprising:
- a hollow ground plane conductor; and
a center conductor, said center conductor being mounted within the hollow ground plane conductor and said center conductor being adjustable relative to the hollow ground plane conductor such that the capacitance of the apparatus can be varied, thereby measuring the complex permittivity of varying volumes of the substance.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A novel apparatus and method for time-domain tracking of high-speed chemical reactions. The apparatus of the present invention includes an RF heating system for heating a reaction zone and a probe system in the reaction zone for measuring the complex permittivity in the reaction volume. A feedback system controls the RF source by adjusting the frequency of the RF source as a function of the relaxation frequency as determined by the permittivity measured by the probe system. Advantageously, the novel apparatus and method of this invention is particularly useful for RF dielectric heating to recover products from oil shales since it was found that the optimum RF frequency for heating oil shale changes rapidly as the kerogen is heated to elevated temperatures.
-
Citations
29 Claims
-
1. An apparatus for measuring in situ the complex permittivity of a substance, the apparatus comprising:
-
a hollow ground plane conductor; and a center conductor, said center conductor being mounted within the hollow ground plane conductor and said center conductor being adjustable relative to the hollow ground plane conductor such that the capacitance of the apparatus can be varied, thereby measuring the complex permittivity of varying volumes of the substance. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
-
-
12. A probe apparatus for measuring in situ the complex permittivity of a substance, the apparatus comprising:
-
a hollow ground plane conductor; and a center conductor, said center conductor being coaxially mounted within the hollow ground plane conductor and being embedded in a portion of the substance, and said center conductor being adjustable in length relative to the hollow ground plane conductor such that the capacitance of the apparatus can be varied, thereby measuring the complex permittivity of varying volumes of the substance. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
-
-
21. An apparatus for measuring in situ the complex permittivity of a substance, the apparatus comprising:
-
a reference probe, said reference probe comprising a first broad band transmission line which is positioned adjacent a portion of the substance; and a measurement probe, said measurement probe comprising a second broad band transmission line, the second broad band transmission line having at least one conductor which is embedded in said portion of the substance. - View Dependent Claims (22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27)
-
-
28. A method for measuring the complex permittivity of a substance, the method comprising the steps of:
-
obtaining a probe apparatus, the probe apparatus comprising; a hollow ground plane conductor; and a center conductor, said center conductor being mounted within the hollow ground plane conductor; placing the probe apparatus adjacent a portion of the substance such that the center conductor of the probe apparatus is embedded in said portion of the substance; generating in situ a very fast rise time voltage step between the hollow ground plane conductor and the center conductor of the probe apparatus; and analyzing a system response to the fast rise time voltage step so as to determine the complex permittivity of said portion of the substance. - View Dependent Claims (29)
-
Specification