Jonathon Speed
Keit Spectrometers United Kingdom
- Conference: Process Conference
- Presentation: Turning an FTIR spectrometer into a universal concentration meter for the bulk and petrochemical industries
- Presentation Time: Thursday 13:15
Dr. Jonathon Speed, CChem, is the Product and Applications Manager at Keit Spectrometers. Receiving both his Masters and his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Southampton, Dr. Speed has authored multiple publications in the field of vibrational spectroscopy for the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the American Chemical Society (ACS). Dr. Speed’s areas of expertise include nanotechnology, particle and colloid characterisation, and the use of FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared) & Raman spectroscopy in material analysis and in situ characterisation of processes, and has published eight patents in the field of surface science.
FTIR spectroscopy is a well-established quantitative analysis technique, but it's application to harsh production processes typically found in petrochemical plants has to date been restricted by the inherent fragility of Michelson interferometers and fibre probes. Keit's IRmadillo FTIR has no moving parts, and so overcomes these obstacles allowing the measurement of concentrations of multiple species of interest simultaneously over a wide range of concentrations simultaneously. Here we present the methods and methodology of calibrating the same spectrometer to work in a number of different processes of interest to the petrochemical and bulk chemical industries. We will present the results for calibration of the spectrometer to monitor BTEX levels in water, total acid number, alcohols in gasoline, water in glycol levels and water in common solvents. Attention will be paid to ensuring concentration prediction models are robust, long lasting and even transferable from instrument to instrument.