Level: Intermediate
David Barnett, Formulation Design Chemist, Syngenta
Particle size analysis of samples of our pesticide formulations is carried out by using laser diffraction techniques in combination with the MIE or Frauenhofer theory calculations. Achieving reliable and repeatable results is critical, and time-consuming sample preparation and instrument maintenance is key to the measurement success.
Syngenta automated the sample preparation process in its high throughput system to measure hundreds of samples a day. However, the instrument is prone to getting contaminated with any poor samples prepared and requires constant maintenance and cleaning, making it difficult to obtain reliable data. In order to avoid data quality issues in the future, this talk will demonstrate how reliable particle size data can be obtained from an image using the functional data analysis in JMP Pro. The data will then be modeled to give a very good approximation of the size without any information apart from the image itself. This means that the throughput can be increased further, and size data guaranteed for every sample prepared.
