FIGHTING A DUEL WITH WATER?

Dual /multiple chambers Water Permeability Instrumentation for higher lab throughput

Permeability leader Versaperm has introduced a new duel or multi-chamber instrument to measure water vapour permeability to a few ppm or better. The equipment can also be configured to measure O, CO₂ or N. Labs increasingly have to characterise and measure an ever widening range of materials, compounds, laminates and components, especially in the never-ending search for new marketing and technical features.

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Water vapour is particularly important due to the way it can dramatically alter a material’s performance - as well as the £100M plus of wastage it causes in the UK alone each year.

Permeability affects properties ranging from the shelf life of pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs, through to the quality of print on a surface. The physics of some specimens often seems counter-intuitive – for example tightening a seal can actually make it worse, and simple processes such as forming or bending can easily change permeability by 400+%. This means the results for many products can not simply be estimated from an individual material’s properties but must be measured directly.

Versaperm’s new MK VI meter is highly automated and its computerised control and multiple chambers can cope with several samples at a time - and still produce a permeability measurement in as little as 30 minutes for some materials. It needs very little re-calibration and requires, at most, minimal training to give results that can be accurate to better than one part per million. Sensitivities for water vapour are typically 0.02 – 3,200g/m2/day for flat materials and 0.1-321mg/day for containers. Results are both accurate and highly repeatable.

The company also operates a laboratory service to measure permeability where the volume or logistics of measurements does not demand a dedicated instrument.