30 FOOD & DRINK TECHNOLOGY
Customers send foodstuff samples to this contract quality control laboratory, which has a specialty in fast turnaround service. A typical request includes five or six measurements, including fat (oil) content.
Te Soxhlet method used for the oil measurement is slow, with measurements taking as long as six hours. Tis situation led to serious bottlenecks that were reducing throughput and affecting the lab’s ability to deliver its promised rapid analysis service.
Te process is also rather
cumbersome, can be inaccurate, and requires highly skilled personnel. In addition, many of the hazardous chemicals used are becoming increasingly unacceptable according to international environmental standards.
Using nuclear magnetic resonance to test fat content in foods
A contract laboratory dramatically increased sample throughput using nuclear resonance technology.
Un laboratoire externe augmente sa capacité de traitement d’échantillons de façon spectaculaire grâce à la technologie de la résonance nucléaire.
Vertragslabor erhöht mithilfe der Kernresonanztechnik drastisch seinen Durchsatz.
T
he quickening pace of business caused one of Europe’s leading
independent testing laboratories to seek an alternative to the standard solvent extraction/acid hydrolysis (Soxhlet) method for testing the amount of fat in a variety of foods. Tis contract laboratory, with numerous sites throughout the UK and Ireland, provides quality control analytical services to the food industry. By converting from the wet chemistry method to an MQC benchtop nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analyzer for measuring fat content of foods, the lab reaped significant economic and environmental benefits. Fig. 1. is a brief overview of NMR’s advantages over other secondary methods.
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Te lab began seeking a rapid technique that would improve turnaround time without increasing operating costs, but would also be comparable to the industry standard Soxhlet technique.
Analytical methods Tere are a number of analytical methods that can be used to conduct the testing. Such methods are often referred to as secondary techniques, since they are usually set-up to match the results produced by solvent extraction.
To provide a result equivalent to the traditional extraction techniques, secondary techniques must be correlated against the reference technique used.
Although they may be fast in use, many secondary techniques need to be calibrated and maintained regularly. Maintenance and consumables add significantly to the cost of ownership.
For example, Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) is reasonably fast, but it requires high maintenance and the cost of compressed CO2
that is used to extract oil is also significant.
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