Moisture analysis: What is a moisture analyzer?
Let's start by explaining why a moisture analyzer is needed. The food industry is one example. As stated in Food Quality and Safety, "International and national standards define the allowable moisture content thresholds in commercially available products." Moisture analyzers are widely used to meet these standards. They far exceed the impact of the food industry on various products, such as pharmaceuticals, plastics, paint, wood, bird food, soybeans, fertilizers, cement, detergents, shampoo... and so on.
So, what is moisture?
Good question. For the topic of this article, moisture is anything that evaporates during heating. In addition to water, it can also include fats, oils, alcohol, and solvents. Please note that certain volatile substances may be released during the moisture analysis process. Procedures should be developed to take this into account. Do not analyze flammable and explosive materials or materials that may cause danger during heating.
What is a moisture meter?
A moisture analyzer, also known as a moisture balance, is a programmable desktop laboratory instrument used to measure the moisture content of small samples of produced or processed products. Moisture analysis can be conducted before, during, or after product packaging. They combine the analytical balance with a heater to disperse the moisture in the tested product. Unlike large oven dryers that perform batch drying on the production line, a moisture analyzer is used to confirm whether the batch dryer is performing its work correctly or needs to be adjusted on the production line.
How does water balance work?
Nowadays, most moisture analyzers operate using the so-called thermogravimetric principle, which is the method of determining loss on drying (LOD). The loss represents the moisture emitted during the drying process, while the weight change is recorded by an analytical balance. Program the testing program to achieve moisture balance and continuously calculate weight changes while performing drying operations. Due to the small sample size, analysis can be completed very quickly. The drying temperature is provided by infrared or halogen heaters, the latter technology being the most popular as it can be used to determine the moisture content of almost any substance. It also dries faster than infrared.
Microwave drying is another technology, but these instruments are larger and more expensive than halogen heated moisture analyzers.
Researchers and quality control personnel can choose soft (slow), standard, and high (high) heat rate drying curve management without the need for slope programming. By pressing Key Select ™ Mode until the required report is displayed on the display screen, then release the button to send the report to the printer or output it to the computer through RS232 to simplify report generation.
Moisture meter for specific tasks
You can specify a moisture analyzer designed to simplify specific tasks. For example, it is recommended to use the aforementioned XM60 for moisture measurement in the food industry
Companies committed to providing high-quality injection molded products realize that the moisture content of their resin feed is of great importance to product quality. The DSC 71P is an excellent moisture analyzer for testing low moisture plastics. To save you time, it has a default program to test 75% of commonly used resins.
