AUTOMATED-SYSTEM FOR THE ONLINE MONITORING OF POWDER BLENDING PROCESSES USING NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY .1. SYSTEM-DEVELOPMENT AND CONTROL

An automated system for the on-line monitoring of powder blending proc esses is described. The system employs near-infrared (NIR) spectroscop y using fibre-optics and a graphical user interface (GUI) developed in the LabVIEW environment. The complete supervisory control and data an alysis (SCADA) software controls blender and spectrophotometer operati on and performs statistical spectral data analysis in real time. A dat a analysis routine using standard deviation is described to demonstrat e an approach to the real-time determination of blend homogeneity.