4 Predictions for 2019: A recap

Acrylamide, Analytical Chemistry, Automation, Formaldehyde, Nitrosamines, predictions, Process Measurements, SIFT-MS,

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This time last year we peered our beady eyes into our crystal balls and made some chromatography predictions for the year to come.

It’s time to see how we did with a school style marking system.

 1. If you are not measuring formaldehyde now, you soon will be. C

This issue is still bubbling under. Some progress, but it didn’t really happen in 2019. It did, however, by a circuitous route lead us into some extremely interesting SIFT-MS work within the food industry with real-time measurements of the evolution of acrylamide during food processing. Unfortunately, NDAs restrict us from sharing the details with you right now. But you will hear more about this in due course.

2. Process measurements will be a hot topic. C+

Not red hot maybe, however we did see Georgia Sanxaridou at CMAC present her work on Supercritical CO2 Extraction Drying End-Point by Using SIFT-MS Analysis and the potential it has for continuous manufacturing. That was back in July at our SIFT-MS User Group Meeting. See the video of her talk below if you’re interested.

3. The need to reduce VOC emissions from polymers will impact every industry. C

While plastics have featured heavily in our social feeds and headlines for the last 12 months, it hasn’t translated into legislation or regulatory change just yet. We’ll give this one a ‘kind of right but somewhat overstated’ label and re-visit in 2020.

4. The full potential of breath analysis for healthcare will be realised. A

That’s a Bingo!

In 2020 and beyond, Syft Technologies, ably assisted by Anatune, will be supporting a series of large-scale breath projects with researchers at Imperial College London, which should finally bring breath analysis by SIFT-MS into the mainstream. This has been helped by the development and launch of Thermal Desorption (TD)-SIFT-MS by Syft Technologies and GERSTEL in 2019 and a lot of background work on how best to use it. See our YouTube playlist for more information.

5. N-Nitrosamines. D

This one was and continues to be huge but we managed to miss it entirely in last year’s predictions hence the terrible mark. This will feature heavily in 2020 so more on that anon. Check out this blog post for a brief overview of the issue.

We’ll be reading our tea leaves for the next few days so keep an eye out for our 2020 chromatography predictions later this week.