八十年代过程分析仪器展望

Prospects for Process Analyzers of the 80’s

过程分析仪器处于快速变化之中。为窥测八十年代过程分析仪器的概貌,本文将探讨主要技术发展动向。微处理机的应用最引人注目,目前主要用于一些多组分分析仪器,预料其应用将扩展到一些较简单的单组分分析仪器。过去除气相色谱法外,多组分分析技术的在线应用很难普及。预计今后面貌将会改变,若干种过程谱仪将在许多生产流程中推广使用。探索和发展简易选择性直接探头的工作越来越受人重视,早期产品中所存在的弱点将因微处理机的采用而减轻或消除。系统设计和分析系统中分析仪器以外的辅助环节越来越受重视,所谓“预装分析系统”应运而生,取样和试样预处理概念、技术和系统设计将发生重大变革。

The process analyzers (PA) are undergoing rapid changes. In thispaper, the most important trends of development of PA are reviewed for the pur-pose of giving a general picture of the PA of the 80′s. The application of micro-processors in the design of PA is most fascinating, it will be extended to a lot ofsimpler, monocomponent PA, such as pH meters, ion activity meters, conductometers,nondispersive IR gas analyzers, etc. for correcting base-line shift, calibrating, dataprocessing, compensating for errors resulted from the changes of background com-position of sample and environmental conditions, controlling instrument operationand monitoring instrument working status, etc. in the next few years, although theuse of them today is primarily limited to several types of multicomponent PA.With an exception of gas chromatograph, the use of process multicomponent analy-zers was not popular in the past. But situation is changing rapidly. It is not un-safe to predict that the application of a series of process multicomponent analy-zers, especially liquid chromatographs, mass spectrometers, multicomponent IR ana-lyzers and x-ray analyzers will grow quickly. More and more efforts were put onthe exploitation and development of simple selective direct probes. The weakness ofearly developed direct probes was lessened or overcome due to the adoption ofmicrocomputers. The most attractive direct probes include ion-selective electrodes,solid state electrochemical transducers and optical probes. Composite probes inte-grated with microcomputers with the ability of eliminating complicated interferenceinfluence by mathematical compensation will be available. Another noteworthy trendis that great attention is paid to system design and the auxilliary parts of theanalyzer systems. 'Prepackaged analyzer systems' were born in time, and somechanges in the concept, technologies and hardware design of sampling and samplepretreatment are expected to take place.