What is NIR?

What is NIR?

NIR stands for Near Infrared Reflectance. NIR spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between a sample (e.g. cereals, seeds, oils, finished products) and infrared light that has been dispersed into individual wavelengths, usually by a prism.

Data from spectroscopy is represented in a spectrum – here is a typical spectra file.

 

 To anyone (other than our Director Chris Piotrowski and his team of chemotricians) this spectrum doesn’t tell us much. Aunir specialises in extracting information from spectra files, putting it into a format that is more understandable and useable.

We do this by creating calibration files. 

Just as each PC or laptop runs software and applications to make it useful for people to carry out tasks, NIR machines need calibrations to convert the information from spectra files into useful numbers. These are your results to interpret and use to make decisions (but if you need help with that part too, just ask).