Important Considerations for Upgrading NIR Instruments
As NIR instrumentation ages or manufacturers discontinue the support for older platforms, it is necessary to look for a replacement. With so many brands and models in the market and manufacturers’ claims of impressive capabilities, how does one narrow down the selection and find the correct choice?
Here are a couple of key things to consider:
Applications:
When looking into instrumentation, start with the materials and parameters of interest for testing and whether an in-line or benchtop application is desired. The design of the sampling system can vary from brand to brand.
Precision and accuracy:
Not all NIR instruments are manufactured with the same quality or specifications. The technical details have a fundamental impact on the performance of the calibrations.
Consider the wavelength range, signal to noise ratio; resolution, etc. All of these technical specifications can limit the degree of accuracy and precision. These details are not usually obvious to users without in-depth knowledge of NIR spectroscopy.
Reliability of the instrument:
Life span of the instrument, maintenance requirements, and spare parts replacement. NIR instruments in general have a long life span with a few consumable parts. However, they can become misaligned without an obvious indication and when this happens, the results may become inaccurate. This may result in critical operational challenges and possibly out-of-spec products.
Compatibility:
Compatibility of the existing methods to the new instrument. The development of a robust method is a time-consuming process. It may consist of hundreds if not thousands of samples and wet chemistry data in addition to the continuous validation effort. All these efforts will be wasted if the existing methods cannot be transferred onto the new instrument; it is not advantageous to develop methods from scratch for every platform upgrade. Therefore, the technical specifications of the instrument are important for calibration transfer to new platforms and technologies.