Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1194–1198

www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

A novel technique for the measurement of liquid viscosity

Anwar Sadat *, Iqbal A. Khan
Department of Electronics Engineering, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, UP 202 002, India

Received 21 February 2006; received in revised form 12 September 2006; accepted 15 September 2006
Available online 31 October 2006

Abstract

A novel technique for the measurement of liquid viscosity is presented. In this technique, a disk was driven by a constant speed dc
shunt motor in the test liquid. The change in the motor current measured the viscosity. The change in motor current was measured using
an instrumentation amplifier and the viscosity of the liquid was measured in terms of output voltage. The temperature of the liquid was
controlled using a peltier cooler/heater and was measured using an AD590 two-terminal integrated circuit temperature sensor. The vis-
cosity of vegetable oils (groundnut, palm, sunflower, coconut) in the temperature range from 20 C to 60 C were determined. The results
thus found were similar to the results obtained from a Redwood viscometer. This technique is useful to measure viscosity of liquids.
 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Vegetable oils; Viscosity measurement; Viscosity–temperature characteristics

1. Introduction using a constant force, such as falling ball viscometer the

Vegetable oils are used as salad oils, cooking oils, spreads
and ingredients in several foods. The price of vegetable oil
may vary considerable from time to time, depending on
production costs and availability. Due to economic impor-
tance of oils and fats it is vital to develop methods to con-
firm authenticity, to detect adulteration and to define the
composition of blends (Ashurt & Dennis, 1996; Carelli &
Cert, 1993). Gas and liquid chromatography are the tech-
niques that have been widely used for oil analysis (Cert,
Moreda, & Perez-Camino, 2000), with which it is possible
to analyze the composition of the natural constituents of
the oils or of possible adulterants. However, they are time
consuming and require sample manipulation. Vegetable oils
are complex mixtures of many triglycerides. Viscosity of
vegetable oils depends on the composition of triglycerides.
Various mechanical vibration-based viscosity sensors
are available for measuring liquid viscosity, with the force
required to induce motion related to the liquid viscosity
and density. If a body is moved through a viscous liquid
*
Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +91 571 2721148.
E-mail address: anwart7039@rediffmail.com (A. Sadat).
resulting travel time or distance covered determine the vis-
cosity. Quartz crystal resonator (Martin, Wenzel, & White,
1989) and ultrasonic plate wave (Stoyanov & Grimes,
2000) are also used to measure fluid viscosity. While these
measurement techniques offer outstanding performance,
accurate viscosity measurement requires a simultaneous
temperature measurement of the sample liquid since the
viscosity of the liquid is generally highly temperature
dependent. Due to the thermal capacity of common liquids,
the measurement of the viscosity temperature characteris-
tics using classical viscometer setups can be quite time con-
suming and can moreover require considerable heating
power (Jakoby, Klinger, & Svasek, 2005). The effects of
temperature on viscosity of liquids are highly significant;
the temperature dependence of viscosity was studied by
several researchers (Giner, Ibarz, Garza, & Xhian-Quan,
1996; Ibarz, Vicente, & Graell, 1987; Khalil, Ramakrishna,
Nanjundaswamy, & Patwardhan, 1989; Rao, Cooley, &
Vitali, 1984; Saravacos, 1970; Vitali & Rao, 1984). In their
studies they found that the effect of increasing the temper-
ature was a decrease in viscosity.
In this paper, we report a viscosity measurement tech-
nique for liquids. The principle of viscosity measurement

0260-8774/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2006.09.009
 A. Sadat, I.A. Khan / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1194–1198 1195

is that the torque required to rotate a disk at constant The tangential force df on the ring of radius r and infinites-
speed inside a liquid bath is proportional to its viscosity. imal thickness dr on the surface of the disk (Fig. 2) is given
The current to a dc shunt motor required to rotate the disk as
is proportional to the torque. The viscosity of vegetable oils xr
(groundnut, palm, sunflower, coconut) in the temperature df ¼ l   2pr  dr ð4Þ
h
range 20–60 C were determined by measuring the current
The differential torque dT generated on the ring is given as
to a dc shunt motor using an electric circuit. In our study
we found that the differences among the viscosity of vege- dT ¼ df  r ð5Þ
table oils decreases as the oil temperature increases. The 2plx 3
temperature of the oil was controlled using a peltier dT ¼ r dr ð6Þ
h
cooler/heater and was measured using an AD590 two-ter-
minal integrated circuit temperature sensor. Torque T on one side of the disk is given by integrating Eq.
(6) with the limits 0 to R as follows:
Z R
2. Theory 2plx 3
T ¼ r dr ð7Þ
0 h
The novel viscometer was fabricated using a stainless
steel cylinder is shown in Fig. 1. In this viscometer a disk which results
of radius R rotates at an angular velocity x in a liquid of plxR4
viscosity l. The velocity distribution u(y, r) between the T ¼ ð8Þ
2h
disk and top or bottom surfaces of the cylinder is given
Neglecting shear on the outer disk edge, the total torque
by
 Ttotal on both sides of the disk is twice of the torque T.
y Thus the total torque Ttotal can be expressed as
uðy; rÞ ¼ rx 1  ð1Þ
h
plxR4
where h is the clearance of top and bottom surfaces of the T total ¼ ð9Þ
h
cylinder from the disk, y is vertical distance from the disk
surface and r is the horizontal distance from the axis of Assuming x, h and R as constants
rotation. The tangential stress s on the surface of the disk T total ¼ kl ð10Þ
is given as pxR4
    where k ¼ is a device constant.
h
 ou  The torque generated by dc shunt motor Tm is given by
 
s ¼ l  ð2Þ
 oy y¼0  Tm ¼ TL þ Tf ð11Þ
rx
s¼l ð3Þ where TL and Tf denotes usable torque and frictional tor-
h que, respectively.
Assuming Tf as constant
T m aT L ð12Þ
Torque available at the motor output drives a load.
If the losses are negligible, the electrical power EIcos /
equals the mechanical power Tx
EI cos / ¼ T x ð13Þ

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup. Fig. 2. A ring on the disk surface with infinitesimal thickness dr.
1196 A. Sadat, I.A. Khan / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1194–1198
In dc power factor cos / is unity
EI ¼ T x
Since supply voltage E and angular velocity x are
constants
T aI ð14Þ
From Eqs. (10) and (14)
Ial ð15Þ
Thus the current of dc shunt motor is directly proportional
to the viscosity of the liquid under test.
3. Experimental method
The schematic representation of the experimental setup
is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of a closed cylinder of stainless
steel (diameter 40 mm and height 40 mm). The radius and
thickness of the disk were 5 mm and 0.5 mm, respectively.
A peltier cooler/heater (TB-127-1, 0-2,5 Kryotherm, Rus-
sia) was used to control the temperature of the oil. A peltier
cooler/heater (TEM) consists of semiconductor elements
made of bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3), which are connected
electrically in series and thermally in parallel. These thermo-
electric elements are mounted between ceramic substrates;
this arrangement causes heat to move through the module
from one side to the other. Therefore, one module side will
be cooled while the other is simultaneously heated. The heat
pumped through the peltier cooler/heater is proportional to
the magnitude of the applied dc electric current. The heat
generated by the TEM hot side was used to heat the oil sam-
ple in the cylinder. The cold side was connected to the sink
and fan for effective heating. The magnitude of the current
passing through TEM was used to maintain or control the
temperature of the oil.
The circuit diagram for the measurement of viscosity is
shown in Fig. 3. A resistance (RL) in series with dc shunt
motor was connected to a 12 V dc supply. The voltage
(Vr) was proportional to the current of dc shunt motor.
Voltage (Vf) from the potentiometer was proportional to
the frictional torque. The voltages (Vr) and (Vf) were sub-
Fig. 3. Proposed circuit for the measurement of liquid viscosity.
tracted and amplified by the instrumentation amplifier
(AD624, Analog Devices). The accuracy of the AD624
was 0.01%. For the experiment a disk of diameter 10 mm
was rotated at a constant speed of 900 rpm in the cylinder,
completely filled with 20 ml of the sample. The rpm of the
constant speed dc shunt motor was measured using a digi-
tal tachometer (RC-100, Selectron). The sensor with sam-
ple was allowed to reach a constant temperature and the
measurements were obtained in the range from 20 C to
60 C. The temperature of the oil was measured using
two-terminal integrated circuit temperature sensor
(AD590, Analog Device) with accuracy ±0.5 C. The out-
put of the instrumentation amplifier was measured using
an electronic voltmeter (DMM2002, Keithley) with accu-
racy ±0.006% of actual reading. Five replications at each
temperature were carried out and their average was used
in the calculations. The time required to complete the mea-
surement was approximately 1 s.
For the experiment vegetable oils (coconut, groundnut,
palm and sunflower) were used. A Redwood viscometer
specification number 1 (MSW-527, Macro Scientific) was
used as the standard viscosity measurement device for mea-
surement of kinematic viscosity of vegetable oils at different
temperatures (Igathinathane, Poordesimo, Womac, Malle-
swar, & Appa Rao, 2005). The temperature of the oil was
controlled with an accuracy of ±0.2 C as the viscosity of
vegetable oils decreases with increase in temperature.
4. Experimental results
The variation of the observed kinematic viscosity of veg-
etable oils with the temperature is shown in Fig. 4. Data
indicates that the viscosity of the vegetable oils varies with
temperature. Hence, it required precise control of tempera-
ture. From Fig. 4 it can be observed that the groundnut oil
has the highest viscosity among the oils tested followed by
palm oil, sunflower oil and coconut oil. The variations of
the viscosity in the range of temperatures studied were
maximum for the groundnut oil and least for the coconut
oil. There were similar variations in the viscosity of palm,
sunflower and coconut oils with temperature.
 A. Sadat, I.A. Khan / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1194–1198 1197

Fig. 4. Observed variation of redwood viscosities of vegetable oils with temperature.

The output voltage of proposed method at different tem- evident from the plot that the output voltage was a maxi-
peratures for the oils is shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that mum for the groundnut oil and least for the coconut, with
the groundnut and coconut oils curves stand apart. It was palm and sunflower in between. Greater output voltage

Fig. 5. Output voltage (V) for vegetable oils with temperature.

Fig. 6. Plot of output voltage versus observed viscosity.

1198 A. Sadat, I.A. Khan / Journal of Food Engineering 80 (2007) 1194–1198
signified that the viscosity values were higher. Fig. 6 shows
the plot of output voltage of the proposed viscometer and
the observed viscosity data from the Redwood viscometer.
This plot showed a linear correlation between the two
quantities. The viscosity (g) of the vegetable oils can be
found by measuring the output voltage (V) of the proposed
method and multiplying it with K as follows:
g¼K V ð16Þ
3
where K = 0.0125 · 10 is a constant .
5. Conclusion
Viscosity measurement technique with temperature con-
trol and measurement for liquids has been presented. The
liquid viscosity can be measured by observing the output
voltage of the proposed method and multiplying it with
constant K. The viscosity of vegetable oils was determined
using the proposed and a Redwood viscometers. The
results have shown that both devices demonstrated similar
viscosity temperature characteristics. The proposed vis-
cometer can therefore be used to measure the liquid
viscosity.
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