On Jun 17, 2013 The kick-off meeting of the EMRP project Metrology for Moisture in Materials (SIB64 METefnet) took place in MIKES (Helsinki).
Around 70% of industries use drying at some stage of their production process. Active ingredients in pharmaceuticals, carbon-fibre composites, polymers, food powders, novel cellulose-based active paper, biomass and in many other solid materials are highly affected by moisture when processing into various products. Errors and inconsistencies in moisture measurement and control in industrial processes lead to decreased process speed/throughput and increased wastage, shortened durability of biomaterials, increased energy consumption in drying and increased fine particle emissions in biomass combustion.
Currently more than 1300 national or international documentary standards are in active use because available measurement methods, reference methods and even the current definitions for moisture as a measurand are material specific. Moisture also is a tricky parameter to measure – moisture is everywhere around us, water can be bound in materials with different strength, etc. These effects escalate in calibrations of moisture analysers with reference samples. The measurement uncertainty is usually substantial, but in many cases unknown.
This international project – SIB64 METefnet – with partners from Finland, UK, Estonia, France, Romania, Czech, Italy, Denmark, Turkey and Slovenia aims at a radical movement away from the standards/procedures-based metrology and towards improved dissemination of SI traceability to moisture measurements in industry by removing ambiguities and inconsistencies in moisture measurement and calibration techniques. This will be achieved through development of new more relevant and effective methods of realising and disseminating SI units of moisture and provision of metrology infrastructure for moisture measurements.
University of Tartu participates in METefnet and is responsible for setting up high-level primary coulometric KF titration measurement method of moisture in different materials.
The full summary of the project can be seen at its (still embryonic) website: http://www.metef.net/
The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.
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