Agriculture and Food Industry
Magnetic Resonance technology is widely used for Quality Control & Assurance (QC/QA) in Seed, Grain, Vegetable Oil/Fat, By-products, Fish, Dairy Products, Chocolate, Dressings (e.g. mayonnaise and sauces), Olives, Avocado and other industrial and R&D applications.
Spinlock contributes to this industry with State-of-Art Magnetic Resonance Spectrometers and Relaxometers for different applications, including some of its unique innovations and inventions. Spinlock´s R&D Team works continuously to develop new applications and improve current solutions for the Agriculture and Food Industries.
Oilseeds & Grains
The Seed/Grain & Edible Oils Sectors are important global economies. The Industry progress requires constant innovation and state-of-the-art technology to accompany its growing process. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) technology has emerged as an instrumental tool for these Industries. The non-destructive, fast, and accurate assessments provided by Spinlock’s NMR Technology are indispensable in today’s modern agricultural and food sectors.
The most popular application for this technology is the Fat/Oil & Moisture determination via TD-NMR. For this, Spinlock develops and provides its reliable and precise SLK Benchtop line, represented by the SLK 200 Series. In addition, today we offer also Inline Solutions for measuring single seed at speed.
Spinlock unique innovations for this market include:
1) The measurement of OLEIC ACID of seed/grain, with a fast (t = 3min) and non-destructive method. In addition, the possibility of measuring a single seed and bulk with the same equipment.
2) The availability of the SLK AS 30 makes the SLK 200 the only Automatable NMR as other autosamplers are only available for other application equipment, e.g. 10mm tubes, not suitable for seed aplications.
3) The unique capability of also measuring PROTEIN content via NMR, with the same equipment, via Spinlock’s unique signal processing method.
The Fat & Oil Analysis is a standardized technique, as seen on the ISO 10565: Oilseeds — Simultaneous determination of oil and water contents — Method using pulsed nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry.”
The NMR analysis of individual seeds allows the selection and reproduction of seeds with high oleic acid content farming them after the determination, since this technique does not destroy the sample.
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Applications
Sunflower
Wheat
Canola
Cotton
Peanut
Soybean
Corn
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Olive
The Olive Oil industry is one of the most traditional arms of agriculture. Also, Olive Oil has been qualified as healthy food worldwide. Magnetic Resonance is a technology that has been used for decades to control:
The right moment to start harvesting, by means of measuring the oil production curve of the olive fruit, to extract the highest possible yield in oil content without risking acidity. Quality Control and price determinator in trade operations. The performance of Extraction Line, by means of controlling the Oil in fruit vis-a-vis the oil in the Pomace and Oil effectively extracted.
When Spinlock first approached the Industry, there was a strong call for a device that would be as precise as NMR (Magnetic Resonance) but would be able to measure “online”, meaning “without having to wait 13 hours for the sample to be dried in the oven”.
The R+D team worked intensively to develop a solution. It was always a problem for the industry, as a press not adequately regulated could imply thousands of U.S Dollars in losses for the oil company or the fruit owner during a single night.
The research concluded with the development of the first and only (patented) method to measure humid olive paste, fast and online, with the advantages of the precision and robustness of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.
This technique has allowed Spinlock to position SLK 100 and SLK 200 products in all the main Olive Oil producing countries like Spain, Italy, Australia and Argentina.
With Spinlock methodology for olive analysis, a unique and simultaneous measurement can be performed to determine the material fat and moisture on dry basis and wet basis. These parameters, together with the oleic acid and other fatty acid contents, allow determining the oil quality safely and quickly. With this methodology, there is no need to previously dry the samples which greatly reduces the process times and delivers wet basis analysis results in just 2 minutes.
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Avocado
The Avocado Production is a fast-growing industry dominated by the discovered health benefits of the Avocado and its customer acceptance for culinary and consumption in general.
Spinlock has applied its unique know-how related to the Fat content determination in high moisture samples to the quality and production control of Avocado. Just like the case of Mayonnaise and Olives, Spinlock’s unique technology offers the possibility to control online (and also inline) parameters like Moisture and Fat content of Avocado Fruit, Pomace and also Oil.
Magnetic Resonance Technology developed by Spinlock is important to determine:
1) The right moment to start harvesting, by means of measuring the oil production curve of the Avocado fruit, to extract the highest possible yield in oil content without risking diseases or quality loss.
2) Quality Control and price determinator in trade operations.
3) The performance of the Extraction Line, by means of controlling the Oil in fruit vis-a-vis the oil in the Pomace and Oil effectively extracted.
For the Avocado Industry, in particular, Spinlock offers the unique advantage of being able to control the production online and very quickly. In addition, Inline NMRs are a growing market and hold a continued customer acceptance as allowing the control and measurement of all samples delivers clients a double benefit: a) controlling the entire production, and b) with the Inline NMR being able to act to separate or discard a product with e.g. a disease before it is processed or packed is a unique advantage to ensure a 100% quality control on any production line.
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Fruit & Pomace
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Dairy Products
The accurate analysis of fat and water content is very important in the dairy industry due to quality control and regular control compliance.
The pulse NMR is an interesting method to determine the fat and water content in dairy products, since it is a non-destructive, sensitive and direct approach.
Dairy samples can be analyzed without extraction or dependence on chemical reactions or indicators. The NMR analysis method is possible due to a pulse NMR analyzer available. This technique is based on the NMR relaxometry analysis. It allows distinguishing within water content, free water and structured water (moisture), and within fat content, solid, crystalline, amorphous, and liquid fat. Compared to classic methods, such as solvent fat extraction or oven drying, the NMR offers many advantages. Besides its speed, the analysis accuracy and reproducibility make the NMR one of the most profitable technologies at the moment.
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Mayonnaise and Sauces
As Technology moves forward, all industries become more and more concerned with quality control and assurance. Particularly in the case of Mayonnaise Industrial production lines, it is critical to control the OIL and MOISTURE content of the product.
Spinlock has developed a novel methodology to replace the traditional Chemical method to control Oil/Fat and Moisture content, also avoiding drying or conditioning the sample for analysis.
The Spinlock NMR method has been developed by our R&D Team together with major Industry players and is today used industrially. It permits immediate control of the entire Production Line, obtaining precise results and avoiding delays and the use of chemicals for the process.
Spinlock NMR is cleaner, safer, and faster for all Industry Quality Control and Assurance processes.
Applications
Mayonnaise
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Chocolate
The SLK 200 NMR analyzer of Spinlock allows to measure Fat and Moisture Content in Chocolate. The SLK 200 delivers fast (seconds) and accurate results with a non-destructive method that guarantees high levels of reproducibility.
The SLK 200 allows immediate feedback to the production plant to control the process. It does not destroy or alter the sample allowing repetitions and multiple measurements.
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Applications
Chocolate
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