A Spectrally™ X1 analyzer measures chemical composition inside a running process — no sampling, no reagents, no downtime. This page walks the optical chain that makes that possible, one component at a time.
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Seven components in series. The first one emits light, the last one hands a number to the plant's control system. Everything in between is there to keep one weak signal — inelastically scattered photons — intact.
Stokes-shifted light from a 785 nm source sits in the near infrared. The colour ramp on the detector is a visualisation, not what an eye would see.
A diode laser illuminates the medium at 785 nm, 600 mW at the fibre. Media that fluoresce under red light get the 1064 nm variant at 800 mW instead.
A bandpass filter cleans the diode's output down to the excitation line. A dichroic plate then splits the paths: excitation goes out to the process, returning light comes back on its own route.
A dual fibre carries light to an immersion probe mounted in the reactor loop or pipeline. The fibre run lets the analyzer sit where a person can reach it while the measurement happens where the chemistry is. No sample is drawn, no conditioning skid is built, nothing is consumed.
Most photons scatter elastically and carry no information. A small fraction returns shifted in energy by the molecular vibrations it met. That shift is the measurement.
By examining scattering — and a very particular kind, inelastic Raman scattering — we get information about chemical composition, internal structure and chemical properties. dr Bartosz Kawa, CTO · Główny Mechanik
A notch filter blocks the elastic line that would swamp everything else. A grating spreads what remains onto a back-thinned, TEC-cooled CCD — every pixel a narrow slice of the spectrum.
Intensity against Raman shift. The bands and their ratios identify what is in the medium; their size says how much. A few hundred milliseconds of integration, repeated as often as the process needs it.
The light trace — the Raman spectrum — is as unique to a substance as a fingerprint. Industry Alarm, 2026
Spectrally OS runs a model built for this chemistry: a CNN reading the full spectrum together with classical chemometric algorithms. Out comes what the process engineer actually asked for — concentrations, an acid value, a viscosity, a pass or a fail — on PROFIBUS, PROFINET or Modbus.
Every design decision below exists because a plant broke a simpler one. Ranked by how much of it competitors cannot copy — the top four came out of a value–uniqueness workshop with our COO in April 2026.
The probe carries its own reference signal, so the instrument calibrates itself and reports its own faults. If anything drifts in the optical path, the analyzer says so before a batch does.
Neural models handle non-linear behaviour and multi-component mixtures, including parameters that are not concentrations — viscosity, for instance.
Probe, spectral range, acquisition time and model are tuned to one chemistry and one process, rather than shipped as a catalogue default.
Recipes change, feedstock changes, the process drifts. Model updates for the first twelve months are part of the agreement, not a change order. (Hardware warranty is a separate term.)
In fouling media the probe retracts, is rinsed, and returns to the measurement position without interrupting continuous operation.
Measurement and logging run on a local database. No cloud dependency, no plant data leaving the site.
Three to five real samples, a preliminary model and a written report — before anyone signs for an instrument. Pilot terms available.
Where Raman scattering is too weak or the bands are silent, the platform reaches for another technique. The method follows the chemistry.
Raman does not replace HPLC as an analytical reference. It replaces waiting for one.
| Property | Raman | NIR | FT-IR | HPLC | Titration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inline in water | Excellent | Difficult | Poor — water absorbs | — | — |
| Time to result | Seconds | Seconds | Seconds | Minutes to hours | Minutes |
| Sampling needed | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-component mixtures | Very good | Good | Good | Excellent | Weak |
| Substance identification | Highly specific | Less specific | Specific | Specific | Indirect |
| Reagents / lab waste | None | None | None | Yes | Yes |
The most valuable data is the data that arrives before the problem grows. Inline analyzers change the logic of the whole process. Robert Stachurski, CEO · Polska Chemia
From acquisition to a number the control system can act on — against hours or days of waiting for a laboratory result. Universal to the platform, independent of industry.
Water is a weak Raman scatterer, so aqueous streams stay measurable — where FT-IR loses the band region to water absorption. Raman bands are also more specific than NIR's overlapping ones, which matters when several components move at once. Where Raman is genuinely weak, NIR or SERS is used instead.
Fluorescence under 785 nm excitation is the usual reason to move to the 1064 nm configuration, 800 mW. The rest of the chain is unchanged.
The probe sits in a retractable holder: it withdraws from the circulation loop, is rinsed with solvent, and returns to the measurement position. Continuous measurement is not interrupted for cleaning.
The probe carries an integrated reference; every measurement is validated against it and disturbances are compensated automatically. Self-diagnostic routines detect contamination and flag deviations to the operator.
“Developing algorithms for a specific production line keeps measurement uncertainty at the level of fractions of a percent. The probe design uses a reference measurement — if anything happens in the optical system, the device detects it immediately.” — dr Bartosz Kawa, CTO
Two jobs: turn a spectrum into numbers (multi-parameter regression), and classify — pass/fail, anomaly, off-spec feedstock. Both run on a deliberate mix of CNN and classical chemometric algorithms. How the models are built.
Into the plant's own layer: PLC, DCS, MES, SCADA, LIMS, over PROFIBUS, PROFINET or Modbus. Data is stored locally; measurement and logging continue without a network connection. How the analyser is connected to a line · integration and rollout.
A one-hour workshop to find the measurement points, one to two weeks for the feasibility study, then months for installation, model calibration and validation on production data. Three to five and a half months is the usual span. The four stages.
Three to five samples from the process, a preliminary model, and a written feasibility report that stays with you whatever you decide next.