Double beam near-infrared spectrometer for compensation of background water absorption and instrumental drift in intensity

A double beam near-infrared spectrometer is developed to compensate the water absorption and instrumental drift in intensity. The spectrometer may be used for both single and double beam measurements,and the two operation modes are compared. The results show that the double beam technique eliminates instrumental drift in the single beam measurement and therefore the stability of the system increases by more than 20%. The compensation of the double beam system on water absorption is verified by the measurement of fat content in milk. The results show that the spectrum data based on double beam mode get better calibration model and lower prediction error than traditional single beam mode.