Powder Blend Uniformity Characterization Of Food Additives using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy

The characterization and determination of content uniformity of powdered food substances through Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) and chemometrics is investigated. The dataset comprises of NIRS signatures of 702 samples of food additives obtained over three years. The food additives are obtained from blending the raw ingredients Carboxymethyl cellulose (E-466), guar gum (E-412) and dextrose. The studies were conducted with the samples provided by the company Blendhub Corp.The spectra were obtained with a FT Spectrum 100N CaF2 DTGS spectrometer manufactured by Perkin Elmer. The spectrometer operated in reflectance mode and captured the spectra at 778 wavelengths in the range 10000 to 4000 cm-1. Several mathematical methods based on calculation of block standard deviation, comparison of spectrum through pattern recognition and computation of principal component analysis have been applied to determine the batch homogeniety. Further, pretreatment methods including Detrending, Savitzky Golay smoothening and scatter correction have been applied to clean the data and enable it fit for analysis. The results of the investigation identify the most suited chemometric procedure for the easy and effective characterization of batch homogeniety in the food additives under consideration.