Fast spice analysis

Over the past number of years meat and sausage companies have extended their incoming goods controls to include mixed spices, additives and auxiliary agents.

These controls are primarily carried out using an NIR gauge, usually with the meat analyser. In order to enable the manufacturers of these mixtures to perform fast controls now too, a spice analyser with the relevant software applications was developed.

The TQC-Zeiss spice analyser allows to obtain information about the measured product within a few seconds (<30secs). Using software especially developed for this purpose, the user can directly chart scan data on a monitor and represent the differences in quality or the deviations from a standard. As the system has a much greater wavelength and consequently measuring range compared to the meat analyser, it is also possible to deduce information about the colour etc. An additional colour measuring system is therefore no longer necessary.

Measuring is based on the principle that when measurements are conducted in the product, a search is carried out for organic molecular compounds and a representative absorption curve based on the results is displayed. As changes in the product will also cause the molecular structure to change, the differences can be seen in the curve progression.

The following information can be deduced using the appliance: colour; product and batch control by means of comparison using the absorption curve; Quantity information for some ingredients percentage moisture, percentage salt with relevant calibrations.







Carl Zeiss Jena GmbH is based in Jena, Germany. www.zeiss.de/spectral