Monitoring the composition of milk products is an important factor in the management of dairy farms and industry. Information on the quantitative content of milk components is necessary to control milk quality, as well as to optimize dairy cow nutrition and diagnose their clinical condition. The content of fat and protein is considered the main criterion for determining the market value of milk. Increasing the efficiency of dairy production requires the use of inexpensive and compact devices that are capable of performing multicomponent analysis of milk both directly on the farm and in technological lines. We investigated the possibility of fast simultaneous determination of fat and protein content in milk by laser polarimetric scatterometry. The block-diagonal elements of the scattering matrix were measured for a series of commercially produced milk samples with the indicated fat percentage, which were diluted by volume with water. From the measured scattering matrices, the size distributions of fat droplets and casein aggregates were reconstructed. Using the size histograms, the content of fat and protein and protein-to-fat ratio in the studied milk samples are estimated.

We present the results of measuring the scattering matrix of a water suspension of zinc oxide at a wavelength of 0.63 μm in the range of scattering angles of 15–150°. The angle dependences of matrix...

The results of measurements of the scattering matrix at a wavelength of 0.63 μm in the range of scattering angles of 10°–155° are presented for an aqueous suspension of lead oxide containing...

A monoblock light-scattering sensor, which is capable of measuring the fat content of milk and indicating the excess by which the somatic cell count (SCC) is over the permissible level, has been developed for installation in dairy systems. In order for the sensor to perform measurements when the milking machine is working in the “milk plug” mode, a flow-through unit is designed in the form of a pipe with a lateral cylindrical branch, in which milk accumulates so as to eliminate large bubbles and achieve continuity of the milk flow. The operation of the sensor is based on the registration of the angular intensity distribution of light scattered in the transparent cylindrical segment of the tube branch. A semiconductor laser with a wavelength of 650 nm is used as a light source for determining scattering in milk. The angular distribution of the scattered light intensity (scattering indicatrix) is recorded using an axial photodiode array. The fat content is determined by the average slope of the measured scattering indicatrix in the range of scattering angles 72–162°. The SCC level is estimated from the relative deviation of the forward scatter intensity normalized to the backscatter intensity with respect to uninfected milk. The sensor has been tested on a Yolochka-type milking machine.

Results of retrieval of size and shape distributions of particles of a dispersive medium using measured data on the scattering matrix of aqueous suspensions of titanium oxide and barium titanate are...