Applications
Measurements our customers could not make before
Most of these are problems solved today by taking a sample and waiting. Each one below is a measurement moved into the process, in real time.
Process analytics
Liquid-phase chemistry in pharmaceutical, specialty chemical, petrochemical, food and beverage, and personal-care production. Entries with "Read the application" have a written page behind them; the rest are measurements the instrument is used for, where the detail is specific enough to your process that we would rather answer it directly than generalise.
Reaction & process monitoring
Track reactant and product concentration as the reaction runs, instead of reconstructing it afterwards.
Read the applicationResidence time distribution
Characterise how long fluid elements actually spend in the reactor before you scale it.
Read the applicationConcentration monitoring
Continuous in-line concentration of reactants, products and solvents.
Purity monitoring
Detect off-spec material as it forms rather than at final QC.
Blending verification
Confirm a blend has reached composition without pulling a sample.
Emulsification monitoring
Follow emulsification in real time, including in optically dense systems.
Complex mixture quantification
Resolve and quantify multi-component mixtures with a calibrated chemometric model.
Reactor design & scale-up
Flow characterisation data to take a process from bench to continuous production.
Continuous chemistry
Composition inside a flow reactor, measured while it runs rather than at the collection vessel.
Read the applicationBioprocess & pharmaceutical
The same measurement, in the broth and downstream of it. Ask about any of these and an engineer answers with what has actually been run.
Bioprocess & fermentation monitoring
Substrate and product concentration during fermentation, measured in the broth.
Bioreactor real-time process control
Live composition feeding control decisions rather than a log reviewed later.
Downstream processing & purification
Composition through separation, wash and polish steps.
Drug formulation & API concentration
API concentration during formulation, without diverting product.
Cell culture media verification
Confirm media composition before and during a run.
Photonics & metrology
Applications served by the K2 Photonics dual-comb laser family. Again, a linked entry has its own page; the others are capabilities we support and will walk you through.
Pump–probe & ultrafast dynamics
Femtosecond-resolution delay scans without a mechanical stage.
Read the applicationDual-comb spectroscopy
High-resolution absorption spectroscopy of gases, liquids and solids.
Terahertz time-domain
THz-TDS without delay-line scanning.
Trace gas detection
Comb-based sensing at low concentration.
Distance & thickness metrology
Absolute distance, laser ranging, thin-film thickness and refractive index.
Optical frequency metrology
Frequency standards and comb-referenced measurement.
One capability, twenty decisions
Everything on this page is the same underlying measurement: the concentration of dissolved species, updated every second, on a stream that keeps flowing. What changes from one application to the next is the decision it unblocks and the evidence somebody downstream requires.
That matters when you are specifying. A vendor demonstration will show you a spectrum. What determines whether the project succeeds is whether the model can resolve your analytes at your concentrations under your process conditions — which is a feasibility question, and the reason we would rather measure your samples before you commit.
How it works
How an application becomes a deployment
The same five steps every time, whichever application you arrived on.
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01
Describe the measurement
The stream and everything in it, the concentration range you need to resolve, the accuracy that makes it useful, temperature, pressure, and whether solids are present.
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02
Feasibility
We measure your own process samples. If mid-IR cannot see your analyte at the concentration you need, this is where we say so.
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03
Configure
Path length, wetted materials, pressure rating and sampling point. These are chosen for your stream, not picked from a catalogue.
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04
Build the model
Calibration set designed to span the range and break the natural correlations, references from your own method, validation on batches the model never saw.
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05
Deploy and monitor
Installed on the loop, integrated over OPC UA where it drives control, with spectral residuals watched so the model warns you before predictions drift.
Not on this list?
Tell us the stream, the chemistry and the decision you are trying to make. If mid-IR can see it, we will say so — and if it cannot, we will say that too.