Simple contactless cells with planar or tubular electrodes have been designed for measurement of the permittivity of solutions. The cells, connected to an integrated circuit of astable multivibrator, respond primarily to the capacitance component of the cell impedance, the multivibrator frequency depends in a defined manner on the solution permittivity and is readily used as the analytical signal in determinations of the ratios of components in binary liquid mixtures; water solution of methanol, ethanol and dioxane have been tested. The response of the cell with planar electrodes satisfies well the simple theoretical model and both the cells provide results with a sufficient sensitivity, a low LOD value (units of %vol) and a good precision (around 1%rel). The cell simplicity, small dimensions, long-term stability and the possibility of powering them from a battery make them suitable for hand-held meters. As an example of application in practice, the content of ethanol was determined in the car fuel petrol.

The possibilities of impedimetric determinations of organic liquids in mixtures with aqueous solutions have been studied in detail, using a planar capacitor cell combined with multivibrator and operational amplifier circuits functioning as a differentiator and a system of dioxane with aqueous solutions of alkali halides. The experimental values have been compared with a simple model and the detector response has been characterized. The behaviour of the detection cell can be reliably predicted on this basis. This approach permits extremely simple, rapid and cheap analyses of binary liquid mixtures, however, it suffers from a serious limitation in that the overall electric conductivity of the mixture must be low.

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