“The biggest trends in microwave technology are to make it faster and simpler,” President/CEO of CEM Corp. Michael Collins told R&D Magazine on Tuesday at Pittcon 2016, which has been taking place all week in Atlanta.
The supplier of process control solutions took advantage of the highly popular conference on laboratory science by holding a brief presentation at its exposition booth to introduce two if its latest products, one of which now allows the company to do something it wasn’t able to do before—measure not only wet products, CEM’s specialty, but dry products as well.
“We see tremendous opportunities in the drying moisture solids area using the microwave,” Collins, who holds a doctorate in Physical Chemistry, added.
The new Smart 6 moisture/solids analyzer, unlike the Smart 5, not only accurately analyzes both wet and dry samples but also significantly reduces sample drying time. The benefits are achieved through the development of iPower technology that features a patented multi-frequency energy source for sample drying. The new product also has a state-of-the-art touchscreen software package with complete statistical analysis and optional IP65 compatibility.
This new technology employs lower frequency energy to briskly remove free moisture and penetrate the sample for fast and efficient heating, while higher frequency energy helps create a uniform heating environment to fully remove bound moisture, which can cause bacteria growth, or non-polar solvents, according to CEM.
“The Smart 6 will revolutionize analysis time for high-moisture applications like dairy, meat, coatings and chemicals by reducing test times by half,” Collins said during the booth conference. “It will also expand CEM’s moisture/solids analysis capabilities to include dairy powders, snack foods, non-polar chemical solvents, low moisture plastics and pharmaceutical materials.”
iWave is the second product CEM introduced at Pittcon 2016—an innovative temperature measure and control system. The new technology for microwave digestion sees through the vessel, measuring the temperature of the sample-acid mixture inside every vessel. It’s like having a fiber optic probe in every vessel improving digestion quality and ensuring accurate data and the safest digestion conditions, according to CEM.
“I see the market expanding in all of those areas. The big area we see is [using microwave systems for] doing sample prep for molecular analysis,” Collins concluded.
Stay tuned for more of R&D’s insider coverage from Pittcon 2016 in the coming days.
