Moisture Analyser Pushes Upward Range to 500 ppm

The HALO-500-H2OTM, designed to measure higher levels of moisture in gases, is gaining notice from gas manufacturers and metrology institutes, reports Tiger Optics (USA).

“Any quality gas laboratory that is doing moisture analysis would be interested. The alternatives aren’t really working,” said Tim Butler, who is sales director of Process Analyser Systems Ltd. – who represents Tiger Optics in the UK. Butler has already sold the device to The Linde Group’s BOC, the largest provider of industrial, medical and special gases in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“The HALO-500 looks tailor-made for more applications than even we anticipated,” said Lisa Bergson, Tiger Optics’ founder and chief executive. “Of course, from the outset, we appreciated the need of many quality assurance labs to measure samples of gas that contain 100, 200, 300 ppm or higher of moisture.”

The device’s range is tipping the scales for some buyers who had been using gas analysers based on older technologies. The HALO line, like all Tiger Optics products, utilizes the patented “Continuous Wave Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy” technology.

In the packaged gas market, the HALO-500 covers the moisture specifications of a myriad of products. The device can measure moisture in samples such as hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, the noble gases, and clean dry air. Renowned for its swift response, the HALO-500 permits a facility’s quality control lab to switch between different samples in a matter of seconds, instead of minutes.

Even under conditions where the instrument is exposed to ambient air, the HALO-500 can achieve 90 percent of a reading in less than 3 minutes. In such facilities, the HALO-500 can be used to monitor the high-usage or “house” gases that are plumbed through work areas. The device is similarly speedy and adept at measuring moisture in gas cylinders that are reclaimed and prepared for fresh use. The HALO-500 is proving equally useful in moisture monitoring in air separation processes, and in quality checks at “fill zones” where refrigerated trucks load merchant products in liquid form.