Accurate Determination of Fat & Moisture

Accurate determination of fat and moisture in low-moisture samples can be challenging, but CEM’s new FAST Trac Analyzer gives you speed and accuracy in an easy-to-use, cost-effective system specifically designed for low-moisture samples.

FAST Trac’s new patent-pending technique quickly provides accurate fat and moisture determinations to help you optimize your process, saving time and money by reducing out-of-specification product.

• 2-minute test including temperature conditioning
• More accurate and robust than NIR
• Rapid sample pre-conditioning allows faster test times than previous NMR systems
• Results comparable to standard methods
• No costly calibration maintenance
• Create new methods with only 3 samples
• Easily transfer methods from unit-to-unit and site-to-site
• No solvents
• Accurate results that are not affected by changes in additives, color, or granularity
• Intuitive, easy-to-use touch screen interface

 

Versatile

FAST Trac offers the ultimate in versatility for low-moisture samples and can be used for dairy powders, snack foods, and other dry food products. It can be used at-line or in the QA/QC laboratory.

• Optimize your drying time
• Make ingredient adjustments
• Maximize least cost formulation savings
• Determine product specifications

 

Environmentally-Friendly

The FAST Trac does not use solvents or other hazardous chemicals.

Easy-to-Use

You don't have to be a chemist to get accurate results. Follow the on-screen instructions to quickly prepare and run a sample. Moisture and fat results are displayed at the end of the test. The intuitive software and touch screen interface make FAST Trac a remarkably easy-to-use system.

High Performance NMR Technology

Rapid analysis is crucial to modern process control. The ability to make even small changes quickly can add thousands of dollars to the bottom line over the course of a year. NMR technology is ideal for accurately determining fat and moisture in a wide variety of low-moisture products, including dairy powders, snack foods, pet foods, and other dried products. Unlike NIR, which only measures the surface of the sample, NMR directly measures fat and moisture throughout the sample, yielding an accurate analysis that is not dependent on sample uniformity and not affected by changes in color and texture.

However, 1st generation NMR systems required temperature conditioning times of up to 20 minutes before the actual analysis, making more rapid, but less accurate techniques, like NIR, more desirable for fast-paced process control environments.

FAST Trac combines NMR accuracy with NIR speed. CEM’s patent-pending NMR technique with rapid sample pre-conditioning accurately measures fat and moisture in only 2 minutes, including temperature conditioning time.

Only 3 samples are needed to create new methods, as the calibrations are based on simple linear regressions, not chemometrics. FAST Trac methods are robust and maintenance calibrations, as needed by NIR systems, are not necessary. Intuitive software makes it easy-to-use...no PhD needed. FAST Trac offers the perfect combination of speed and accuracy for fat and moisture analysis in low-moisture samples.

QuikPrep Technology

Even though NMR is a very fast analysis technique that only takes seconds, traditional NMR systems require a 20-minute temperature conditioning sample preparation step which has prevented the technique’s use in rapid QC processes.

For this reason, CEM developed QuikPrep™, an integrated, patent-pending sample preparation technology. In only 30 - 60 seconds, QuikPrep conditions the sample before it is automatically lowered into the FAST Trac's NMR for rapid analysis.

Interference-Free Moisture Technology

It has been difficult for traditional NMR systems, which use the well-known Hahn-Echo pulse sequence, to measure bound moisture in dry products with even a small percentage of fat because the partial relaxation of fat can lead to interference. Thus, traditional NMR systems can be unreliable for moisture determination if there is even a slight fat variation in the analyzed samples.

CEM has developed a novel, patent-pending Interference-Free Moisture Technology™ (IFM) to overcome this limitation and accurately determine moisture over a wide variation in fat. IFM ensures rapid, accurate moisture measurement over a broad range of dry product samples.