Moisture Analyzers, What Are They And How Do They Work?

Measurement instruments are by no means in short supply and you will see them everywhere. There are parcel scales for posting packages, digital shipping scales for transporting larger items, laboratory balances for the lab, gym scales for keeping track of your weight loss, and food scales for when you go to the market.But there is One digital counting scales that you surely don’t really hear much about is the moisture analyzer.

What is it? moisture analysers are instruments that measure moisture, as the name suggests. Newer models have the ability to accurately measure the amount of moisture in a product. This is important in industries where even the slightest difference in moisture can spell disaster. A good example would be the drug industry. When medication is manufactured all sorts of chemicals are combined and in order to work effectively there has to be a limit to the amount of moisture in it. This can also apply to food, wood products and even textiles. Each industry has its own rules and regulations as far as that goes and moisture analyzers help enforce these.

How do they work? A moisture analyzer works by extracting moisture from a product and measuring that moisture. The machine will take note of the initial weight before drying, and then the subsequent weight after it has been dried. This will give some sort of indication as to how much moisture was present in the product. Each product requires a different temperature setting. The process may be stopped depending on the parameters set by the investigator. This maybe dependent on time, when the product dries or when it reaches a certain weight. Using halogen quartz glass is usually the way in which the drying heat is generated.

Interpreting results Each product has a standard set of values below or above which the result will be said to be abnormal. Most of the later models of moisture analyzers have programmed values for a multiple number of products and can tell you whether it contains an appropriate amount of moisture or not. Some machines will produce a graph against time so you will be able to view the reaction graphically.

With the industries where moisture is a serious issue, you can imagine that more advanced moisture analyzers would be needed and will be much more expensive. Because of the spectrum of needs these machines range from small to large and from simple to the more complex.