Yokogawa deals for gas analyzer firm

Doing something it hasn’t done in about 10 years, Yokogawa Electric Corp. will acquire gas analyzer maker Analytical Specialties, Inc. (ASI).
“Every now and then something comes along and the time and energy it would take to develop that product would be two or three or four more years,” said David Johnson, president and chief executive for Yokogawa Corporation of America at the company’s Technology Fair and 2008 User Conference today in Houston. “This is going to give us all kinds of different applications in different areas. This takes our analytical product line and shifts it into a whole new gear.”
Yokogawa will now add the TruePeak Tunable Diode Laser Gas Analyzers to its analyzer product line.
"One of the exciting things in this deal is the tie into advanced process control with Yokogawa," said Trevor Knittel, the former president of 14-year-old ASI and now general manager of laser technology anyalytical business unit at Yokogawa. The 15-employee ASI will meld into Yokogawa.
Sensors are key to maintaining optimal combustion by constantly monitoring the concentration of oxygen and carbon monoxide. Gas analyzers with high performance can accurately measure this in real time.
Tunable Diode Laser Spectroscopy (TDLS) Technology TDLS sees use in measuring oxygen and carbon monoxide concentrations for combustion control, detecting ammonia and hydrochloric acid in exhaust gas, and monitoring moisture levels in natural gas pipelines. These gases absorb infrared light at specific wavelengths unique to each gas, and it can then measure their concentrations by illuminating them with a laser and analyzing the absorbed wavelength in the spectrum of the transmitted light.
TDLS enables the direct high-speed measurement of combustion and other process gases. Laser gas analyzers with high performance and real-time measurement capability have entered the mainstream of the gas analyzer market.
"This fills a gap in our product line, but it does not complete the line," said Jon Pecchia, general manager analytical business unit North America for Yokogawa.