Guided microwave spectroscopy has kept fighter planes out of harm's way. Now it's helping provide in-line analysis of fat and moisture content in ground beef.
First applied to food inspection in 1993 in a grain milling plant, GMS excels at moisture analysis. It also has the ability to provide feedback data on multiple constituents. That benefit is exploited in a system for rapid analysis of both fat and moisture in ground beef. A commercial system for ground-beef blending that promises enhanced accuracy and processing speed is under development. It incorporates a GMS system from Minneapolis-based Thermo Electron Corp. Helping to apply the unit to ground-beef analysis is Darrel T. Butler, Thermo Electron's GMS specialist. Butler began working with microwave technology 20 years ago while employed by a U.S. defense subcontractor that supplied electronic counter measures for missile detection and radar jamming. He joined a subsidiary of Baker Hughes in Houston, Texas, in 1993 as a GMS system was making the transition from prototype design to commercial scale-up. The business unit was purchased a year later by Thermo Electron, and Butler has been involved in all of the firm's GMS installations since then. He holds an electronics engineering degree from Devry University in Phoenix.