Near-infrared spectroscopy as a process analytical tool - Part 1: Laboratory applications

Hello again, gentle readers. You didn't think I could allow just one column on near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, did you? Aside from my personal interests in NIR, it is, after all, the most mature of the (molecular) spectroscopic methods available for process analytical technologies (PAT). There are, in fact, so many places that NIR is used, there will be two articles on it. The first, on lab applications (known as off-line) will show how a rapid measurement near the process line may speed up the actual process. The second installment will be devoted to at-line and on-line applications, and the implementation of NIR for such analyses. I asked Katherine A. Bakeev to do the honors for NIR. She is as good a writer as she is a speaker, so you should enjoy and learn from these two articles.