1998 Volume 16 Pages 170-178
Acoustic chemometrics is an interdisciplinary approach covering diverse fields including applied engineering, electronics, signal analysis and chemometrics. The applications of acoustic chemometrics are manifold, but quantitative analysis (chemical/physical) and process monitoring and physical characterisation of products are areas in which it can be beneficially used. Potential applications in many industry sectors abound. In one particular sense, acoustic chemometrics is simple: Acoustic signals from any process or equipment, followed by some form of pertinent signal analysis, are subjected to chemometric data analysis. In this context it is often the power of multivariate calibration that comes to the fore. Here, we give one major example of the use of applied acoustic chemometrics – non-invasive monitoring of a pneumatic transport line. Noise and acoustics have been defined as follows: noise – Irregular fluctuations accompanying, but not relevant to, a transmitted signal (Concise Oxford Dictionary), acoustics – science of sound (Scribner Bantam Dictionary). The irregular fluctuations referred to above contain much valuable information, and it is the line acquisition, conditioning and analysis of such fluctuations that we are concerned with in this paper.
