The fibre drop analyser: a new multianalyser analytical instrument with applications in sugar processing and for the analysis of pure liquids

Abstract

An instrumental method for the individual, sequential or collective measurement of the physical and chemical properties of liquids is presented. A prototype of the fibre drop analyser (FDA), working at only one wavelength in the infrared, has been constructed and tested. The instrument has been used to measure individually surface tension, viscosity, refractive index and the chemical composition of the test solution. The instrument has the capability of simultaneously measuring all of these quantities in one measurement cycle and this possibility is discussed on the basis of one set of results obtained from the sugar processing industry. The instrument is also potentially capable of measuring electrochemical properties of a liquid and some preliminary results are presented. The laboratory FDA has been used to test a series of samples from a large cane sugar manufacturer's process and these measurements demonstrate that the FDA technology has the potential to be used as a remote optrode industrial process monitor for sucrose manufacture, and possibly in other industrial applications.

Discrimination Among Different Liquids Based on Correlation Comparison Between Liquid Drop Fingerprints

“…FDT is affected by mechanical and optical properties of the tested liquids. [2] Because FDT is related to time, the speed of drop growth must be quite small and very stable so that the drop is under a quasi-equilibrium condition, upon which the drop analysis is based. Since the speed of drop growth, essentially, depends on the flow control by the feeding pump, it inevitably leads to a severe demand on the design and manufacture of the pump, in practice.…”

A Liquid Drop: What Is It Good For?

“…Single-molecule detection by levitated microdroplet approaches was recently reviewed by Barnes et al (6). In recent years, McMillan et al (7)(8)(9)(10) have intensively studied a drop-based device called a fiber drop analyzer, a small head containing a liquid output orifice and two fibers. One of the fiber brings in the probe light beam and the other conducts the transmitted light to a detector.…”

<title>Preliminary investigation into the analytical potential of the fiber-drop analyzer for body-fluid analysis</title>

“…The flow from the gravity feed for all liquids under measurement in this study is of the Poiseuille's form and given by; q' =irP'R/8l (1) where q' is the flow rate measured in /41/s. P' is the pressure head delivering the drop in Pa, , is the absolute viscosity measured in Pa s, 1 is the capillary length measured in m, R is the radius of the capillary.…”