Energy Generation

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has been used for the analysis of oil producing crops used for many years, some of which are being used in biodiesel, for example soy and canola. However, the trend for using sustainable and non-food crops means that research is increasing into non-traditional sources, for example camelina, jatropha and algae. The main advantage of NMR is that it is easy to calibrate, requiring just pure oil from the crop, which is important when measuring a diverse range of materials and oil composition.

Our MQC+ benchtop analysers can measure the oil content of small quantities and single seeds, enabling seed breeders to select the highest oil bearing single seeds, accelerating the breeding of high oil bearing seeds for biofuel purposes by up to five years. They are also being used to measure oil content of larger samples to help optimise crop yield and oil recovery for mass production.

MQC+ analysers are also used to analyse fuels used to power mobile generators which are typically used in the remotest locations world-wide.