Determination of Water Content in Ethanol by Miniaturized Near-Infrared (NIR) System

The miniaturized NIR (Near-infrared) spectrometer has been utilized for the determination of water content (1-19% range) in ethanol that is the most popular organic solvent in pharmaceutical industries. It has many potential capabilities that can replace the conventional analyzers especially for the on-line measurement since it is compact, versatile and cost-effective. By using two dimensional (2D) correlation spectroscopy, it was preliminarily investigated to find any unforeseen spectral distortion among the spectra collected from the miniaturized spectrometer. The 2D study revealed that the spectral variation clearly followed the variation of water concentration without any spectral distortion or abnormality. PLS (Partial Least Squares) was employed to build the calibration model and the resulting prediction performance was acceptable and stable over several days. Even though the miniaturized NIR system was evaluated to fairly simple chemical matrix, the overall study demonstrates the sufficient feasibility for diverse practical and industrial applications.