Industries Served
with our Products
Header Image: Deployment of Spectra Solutions Underwater oil sensor
Nuclear
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Nuclear energy is an alternative source of green power providing a very low carbon base load and essential in reducing the global carbon emission. A very important feature of nuclear energy is that used fuels can be reprocessed to recover fissile and fertile materials that can then be used as fresh fuel for nuclear power plants. Reprocessing technologies need methods to provide process monitoring and control of the radiochemical processes, be able to identify and quantify key analytes as well as account for immediate identification of diverted material. Raman spectroscopy in tandem with other spectroscopic methods such as absorption can be useful as process monitors for reprocessing processes. Our Raman probe, RAMS multichannel Raman Instrument and absorption sensor are all currently used to monitor concentrations of analytes at each stage in a pilot scale nuclear fuel reprocessing scheme.
Pharmaceutical, Chemical & Biochemical
An attractive feature of Raman spectroscopy is that it enables rapid, non-destructive measurements, and therefore a very useful tool for on-line process monitoring and analysis in the pharmaceutical chemical and biochemical industry. We have been collaborating with a number of Raman instrument companies in the US and worldwide that serve the pharmaceutical, chemical and biochemical industry for our process probes and spectrographs to be used as OEM components in their Raman instruments. Our process probes and spectrographs have been used in several production and development processes that include reaction monitoring in polymer production, crystallization processes and microbial detection.
Petroleum
Crude oil is a highly complex mixture of hydrocarbons of varying molecular weights and polarities that is converted into many different products via a combination of physical and chemical processes in oil refineries. Raman process probes are now being deployed successfully as process analytical tools in various stages of oil refining process. Raman process probes have been used in various oil refinery processes such as naphtha stream monitoring, crude unit optimization, gasoline component modeling, p-xylene production and benzene fractionation. Spectra Solutions Inc. has formed a partnership with a leading oil sensor supplier in China to develop and market our Raman instrument and process probe to major Chinese petroleum refineries such as Sinopec and PetroChina.
Gemology
The gemstone market has been inundated with the tasks of identifying questionable gems in terms of authenticity and provenance. In most cases, gemstone experts often find it difficult to ascertain the quality, authenticity and origin of a gemstone. In particular, the differentiation of natural and laboratory grown diamond is difficult to determine by conventional gem analysis methods. Raman is an ideal method for gemstone analysis because of its nondestructive feature and the definitive presence of Raman fingerprint bands of most gemstones for identification purposes. Our Raman probes are currently being supplied to a leading gemstone institution that is the worldwide source of knowledge, standards, and education in gems and jewelry. The Raman gemstone analyzer that they have developed is being used internally for education as well as supplied to gemstone laboratories worldwide. We continue to work closely with them to develop specialized Raman probes for other gemstone analytical techniques that are under development in their laboratory.
Research Institutions & Academia
Raman is used in universities and research institutions as an analytical tool in wide areas of research projects such as reaction products monitoring and material component identification in semiconductor and polymer research. The development of Raman analytical techniques and Raman sensor developments are also ongoing work in research institutions worldwide. Our Raman systems are currently used in research areas of energy storage materials development, molten salt nuclear fuel development, microfluidic sensors, semiconductor and polymer 3D-printing. Our specialized Raman probes have been designed and built for use in these research fields worldwide.