Industrial Processes

The increasing environmental awareness makes pollution monitoring and reduction more and more important. Pollution monitoring is key to react fast enough on changes and to avoid a high exposure. With measuring the light absorption, photoionization or other optical analytical methods of a sample, different pollution gases and substances can be detected.

Detection of metallic contamination

Metall

 Atomic Absorption spectroscopy (AAS) , for example, can measure traces of iron, aluminum, nickel and chromium in concentrations of parts per million or parts per billion. Such measurements are taken, for example, to determine metallic contamination in aircraft hydraulic oils. They indicate the necessity of system repair or maintenance.

Monitoring of industrial processes and process control

Chimney

Sulphur contained in automotive petroleum products attacks the catalytic converters in vehicle exhausts, leading to increased air pollution, toxic fumes and acid rain. Detection methods, e.g. for NO, NO2, H2S, NH3 and other constituents of exhaust gases, are used for industrial process monitoring by using UV-vis spectroscopy.

Further more Statistical Process Control (SPC) is an important factor in the manufacturing industry to avoid high costs in case of production variances. By implementing different process control methods and tools you can ensure that every discrepancy to the intended process will be noticed as early as possible. The later the deviation will be noticed the higher the damage costs are.

In chemical processes it is common to control the chemical reaction product and its purity. For that purpose, UV light sources can be used to analyze the product with UV-Vis spectroscopy.

Personnel safety in confined spaces

Demand for hazardous material monitoring is ever increasing, as we become more aware of the dangers of chemicals used in industrial processes and the need for personnel and environmental protection. One set of materials – Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) – can be detected with Photoionization, a simple method for quantitative analysis of a variety of compounds. The technique is nondestructive so can be used in conjunction with other detectors for extending the analysis.

Further information