Handheld water meter for clipfish and salted cod

Background

The water content of clipfish is a very important quality feature. The industry has long expressed a need for a fast, non-destructive method for measuring the water content of clipfish since this could be used for process control purposes when drying, sorting the quality and checking water content prior to export.

Objectives

To develop and test a handheld instrument for measuring the water content of clipfish.

Subsidiary objectives

• To evaluate and compare different technological options for measuring the water content of clipfish. 
• To develop and calibrate the most suitable method. 
• To verify usage and accuracy under industrial conditions.

This is what we will do

The project will evaluate five different technologies that could all be suitable for rapidly measuring the water content of clipfish. Nofima will compare accuracy, speed and ease of use. 

The experiment will also provide a lot of information about how any such handheld instrument shall be best designed and also about how it should be used for achieving the desired accuracy. 

All measurement methods will be evaluated for their ability to measure water content according to the chosen reference method.

We have found that NIR is eminently suitable for measuring the water content of clipfish. The industry would like to develop a handheld/portable instrument for this, and this is now being done in collaboration with SINTEF Digital.

Read more about the project on the FHF’s (Norwegian Seafood Research Fund’s) website