Measurement 35 (2004) 59–63

www.elsevier.com/locate/measurement

Measurement of conductivity of liquids using

AT89C55WD microcontroller
a,* b
A. Rajendran , P. Neelamegam
a
PG and Research Department of Applied Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Tiruchirappalli-621 007,
Tamil Nadu, India
b
PG and Research Department of Physics, AVVM Sri Pushpam College, Poondi, Thanjavur-613 503, Tamil Nadu, India
Received 6 February 2003; received in revised form 20 August 2003; accepted 29 August 2003

Abstract
A conductivity measurement setup has been developed to measure conductivity of ionic solutions using a micro-
controller. A modified AC Wheatstone Bridge network is used to measure conductivity. This instrument system permits
recording of conductivity and temperature and sends data to a computer to enable the computer processing of such
data. A dedicated AT89C55WD (8-bit) based microcontroller and its associated peripherals are employed for the
hardware. The details of its interface to measure conductivity, temperature and to control the temperature and evaluate
results are explained in this paper.
Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Conductivity measurement; Temperature measurement; Microcontroller

1. Introduction reduces the noise level during itÕs operation. This

paper presents the conductivity study of an elec-
The decrease in unit cost and the increase of on- trolyte solution, which takes full advantage of the
chip capabilities have enabled the use of single microcontroller facilities. The conductivity is an
chip microcontroller in instrumentation and mea- important property of the ionic solutions used for
surement technology. This development system analytical purposes. The conductance of a solution
enabled to use of compensation, calibration and depends on its concentration, the nature of the
linearization techniques [1,2] and application of electrolyte, the rate of movement of the current-
microcontrollers in system control and data ac- carrying ions and temperature. Raising the tem-
quisition and processing [3,4]. The advantages of perature by 1 °C increases the conductivity by an
the microcontroller-based system are small, pro- average of 2–3% [5,6]. A good conductometric
grammable, simple, reliable, and low cost. The measurement system should be capable of mea-
entire circuit can be built in a single board, which suring of rapid changes in solution resistance. The
measurement of conductivity along with time and
temperature possesses potential applications in-
*
Corresponding author. cluding in estimating the hardness of water, in
E-mail address: neelkeer@hotmail.com (A. Rajendran). detecting the extent of disease in plant leaves, in

0263-2241/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.measurement.2003.08.015
60 A. Rajendran, P. Neelamegam / Measurement 35 (2004) 59–63

soil studies, in the manufacture of paper and temperature. The output of multiplexer is given to
sugar, in vat dyeing [7]. The most accurate meth- the analog to digital converter (IC 7109), which is
ods of measurement of unknown impedance are kept in the block F. The 7109 A/D converter is a
the bridge methods [8], whose accuracy is basically low power integrating device which provides the
limited only by the accuracy of the known values user with high accuracy, low noise, low drift, ver-
of the various elements constituting the bridge. A satile and economical A/D converter of the dual
modified approach of the balancing techniques of slope integrating 12 bit A/D converter which can
AC WheatstoneÕs bridge network has been re- make 30 conversions per second. It is used to
ported to achieve high accuracy in measurement convert the analog conductivity and temperature
[9,10]. In the present work an operational amplifier into digital values. Block H is an AT89C55WD
based modified Wheatstone bridge network have microcontroller from Atmel Company, a low
been used to measure conductivity of a solution. A power, high performance CMOS 8-bit microcon-
microcontroller based conductivity measurement troller with 20 KB of flash programmable and
setup is designed to measure the conductivity and erasable memory and 256 bytes of RAM. It has
temperature of rapid changing solution resistance four parallel ports, three 16-bit timers/counters,
with time. eight interrupt sources, one programmable serial
port, low power, ideal and power down modes and
it has the facility of three level program memory
2. Experimental lock. Two of its Port 1 and Port 2 are being em-
ployed as input port and another Port 0 as an
The Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of con- output port. The solid-state power controller with
ductivity measurement set up. The platinum cell heater, which is kept in the block G, is used to heat
having a cell constant 1.0 cm
1 is connected to one the furnace. The rate of heating is controlled at
arm of a modified Wheatstone bridge network any temperature by proper commands from the
kept in the block A. The conductivity cell is im- microcontroller. Block I is a two-row 16 characters
mersed in a beaker containing electrolyte solution. LCD display from Hitachi is interfaced with mi-
The unbalanced output voltage of the bridge cir- crocontroller through Port 1 to display the mea-
cuit depends upon the conductivity of ionic solu- sured data and results. Block J consists IC
tion. The output of the bridge network is rectified MAX232 is a dual RS232 transmitter/receiver in-
using precision rectifier which is kept in block B. terface circuit that meets all EIA RS232 specifi-
Block D is a K type chromel–alumel thermocouple cation. It requires a single +5 V supply. The output
is used as a sensor to measure temperature of the MAX232 is connected to COM1 port of computer,
solution. The block E consists of an instrumenta- which is kept in the block K.
tion amplifier, which amplifies the thermo emf
from thermocouple. The block C is a multiplexer
(IC 4051), which is used to select conductivity or 3. Circuit description

A general AC WheatstoneÕs bridge network is

modified as shown in Fig. 2, where two very high
gain operational amplifiers U1 and U2 are con-
nected with the bridge network with the non-
inverting terminal connected to the circuit ground.
This enables the bridge output nodal points B and
D to be almost at the same potentials with respect
to the ground and hence the effect of stray ca-
pacitance that will exist between them and also
between them and ground, may be assumed to be
Fig. 1. Block diagram of conductivity measurement system. minimized [11]. Since B and D are at virtual
 A. Rajendran, P. Neelamegam / Measurement 35 (2004) 59–63 61
 
V0 Z1 Z4 Z1 Z4
Z3 ¼ þ ð7Þ
Rf V i Z2

 
1
1 Z1 Z4 V0 Z1 Z4
¼ Gc ¼ þ ð8Þ
Z3 Rf Vi Z2

V0 ¼ bridge output voltage, Vi ¼ input excitation

Fig. 2. AC modified Wheatstone bridge network with precision voltage, Z2 , Z3 , Z4 ¼ known resistances, Gc ¼ con-
rectifier. ductivity of a solution.
The output of amplifier U2 is given to input of
the precision rectifier constructed with operational
ground, so for the sinusoidal supply voltage amplifier U3 and U4 as shown in the figure.
V ¼ Vm sin xt, the currents through the bridge The chromel–alumel thermocouple is used to
impedances Z1 , Z2 , Z3 and Z4 are respectively given measure the temperature of the sample. An AD548
by, (U6 and U7) amplifier amplifies the EMF gener-
V V V1 V1 ated by the thermocouple. The AD548 is a low
I1 ¼ ; I2 ¼ ; I3 ¼ ; I4 ¼ ð1Þ power, precision monolithic amplifier. It has low
Z1 Z2 Z3 Z4
input offset voltage and drift, low bias current and
Where V1 is the output voltage of the operational low 1=f noise reduces output errors. Cold junction
amplifier U1. If V0 be the output voltage of the compensation is provided using AD590 from an-
operational amplifier U2 then the current through alog devices as shown in Fig. 3. The AD590 pro-
its feedback resistance is given by duces a current proportional to its temperature.
V0 An AD548 amplifier (U5) amplifies the voltage
If ¼
Rf generated by the temperature sensor (1 mV/K).
An ADC interface with microcontroller is used to
Applying KirchhoffÕs current law acquire data for temperature and conductivity of
I1 þ I3 ¼ 0 ð2Þ sample. This board is fabricated using AT89C55WD
microcontroller, ADC 7109, MAX232, and LCD.
and
The output of operational amplifier (U4 and U7) is
I2 þ I4 þ If ¼ 0 ð3Þ connected to pin 13 and 14 of multiplexer 4051 (U8).
The output from the multiplexer (U8) is given to pin
The Eqs. (1) and (2) give
35 of ADC 7109 to convert analog values into digital
V V1 Z3
þ ¼ 0; V1 ¼
V ð4Þ
Z1 Z3 Z1
The Eqs. (1) and (3) give,
V V1 V0
þ þ ð5Þ
Z2 Z4 Rf
The Eqs. (4) and (5) give
Rf
V0 ¼ ½Z2 Z3
Z1 Z4 V ð6Þ
Z1 Z2 Z3
At balance condition of the bridge, V0 ¼ 0, which
is identical with the conventional bridge network.
The conductivity cell is connected instead of Z3 .
The conductivity of a solution is determined by the
given equation Fig. 3. Temperature measurement circuit and multiplexer.
62 A. Rajendran, P. Neelamegam / Measurement 35 (2004) 59–63

values. LCD is interfaced to Port 1 of microcon- START

troller. A solid-state power controller is used to
control the power to the heater. This power con-
INTIALIZE PORTS, SERIAL
troller is constructed with optocoupler MC2TE, PORT AND LCD

UJT 2N2646 and Triac [12].

SELECT TEMPERATURE

CALL ADC START ADC

4. Measurement and details of software STORE VOLTAGE

CHECK EOC
A fixed sinusoidal excitation voltage of 1 V is PROCESS TEMPERATURE SIGNAL
NO
applied to the bridge. A modified AC Wheatstone YES
SELECT CONDUCTIVITY
network, which is formed by connecting the con- READ DATA FROM
ductivity cell at one arm of the bridge and selecting CALL ADC
ADC 7109

the resistance value Z1 (100 X or 1 kX), Z2 (1 kX),

and Z4 (1 kX). By keeping the temperature bath at STORE VOLTAGE
RETURN
various temperatures the conductivity is measured. PROCESS CONDUCTIVITY
The conductivity is also measured for various
concentrations. The preset VR1 is adjusted for
DISPLAY TEMPER ATURE AND
calibration of temperature. The potential over the CONDUCTIVITY

cell is alternated, avoiding polarization of the

electrode. SEND DATATO PC THROUGH
COM1 PORT
Software is developed in assembly language and
C language to initialize LCD display, serial port,
YES
selection of temperature or light intensity by CONTINUE?
multiplexer, to start ADC conversion, to check
end of conversion, to read higher and lower bytes NO

of ADC by enabling LBEN and HBEN signal, END

measure the conductivity of the sample from Eq.
(8), temperature of the sample, indication of over Fig. 4. Flow chart for performing conductivity measurement
system.
range and sign of data, data computation for ac-
quired data, storage of data for conductivity and
temperature, and to send data to PC. To transmit 5. Results and discussion
data to PC, software is written to select UART
mode, to select timer 1 for nongated auto-reload, The microcontroller-based instrumentÕs perfor-
to set 4800 baud rate, to start timer 1 to send data mance in measuring conductivity of samples is
to transmit buffer, so that a PC can read data investigated by comparing its response with results
through COM1 port. For the development of by other methods [13,14]. The instrument fabri-
hardware and software 80C535-microcontroller cated has been used to study the conductivity of
kit, which has six parallel ports is used. After de- KCl, NaOH, and NaCl solutions and the variation
velopment the codes are stored in the program of specific conductivity with temperature. The
memory (flash EPROM) of the AT89C55WD conductivity cell is dipped and conductivity is
microcontroller and program is executed. The measured for various liquids to check accuracy
flowchart for performing the above tasks is given and reproducibility of the instrument. With the
in Fig. 4. Software is also developed to initialize circuit set for calibration the conductivity cell is
COM1 port in the PC, to receive data from the dipped into KCl solutions, maintained at the re-
microcontroller, to store data in a file and to send quired temperature, for which the literature values
commands to microcontroller. [14] of specific conductivities are known.
 A. Rajendran, P. Neelamegam / Measurement 35 (2004) 59–63 63

NaOH, and NaCl for various temperatures is

given in the Fig. 6. It is observed that conductivity
increases with temperature. Use of standard re-
sistance of high accuracy will reduce the error
component due to it. Accuracy can be increased
using a 16-bit A/D converter. The measurement
system was tested with different samples to check
the reproducibility. In this instrument the manual
supervision involved is little.

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