Yokogawa Electric Corporation has announced the acquisition of Analytical Specialties, a company with a unique gas analyser technology. Yokogawa Corporation of America, Yokogawa’s North American subsidiary, acquired all the stock of ASI on 1 April, 2008.
With this acquisition, Yokogawa is adding the TruePeak Tuneable Diode Laser Gas Analysers to its line-up and strengthening its ability to deliver comprehensive solutions in the industrial automation market.
Background
The industry environment has been changing rapidly due to such factors as surging oil prices and more stringent controls on greenhouse gas emissions. The power plant, iron and steel, incineration, and chemical industries are working hard to save energy, reduce CO2 emissions, and ensure safe operations by optimising combustion. This tendency will accelerate.
Sensors play an important role in maintaining optimal combustion by constantly monitoring the concentration of oxygen and carbon monoxide. Gas analysers with high performance are needed to accurately measure this in realtime.
The technology
Tunable diode laser spectroscopy (TDLS) is used in many industries for such purposes as 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 their concentrations can be measured by illuminating them with a laser and analysing the absorbed wavelength in the spectrum of the transmitted light.
ASI’s Solution
ASI was established in 1994 and has developed the TruePeak family of laser based analysers. ASI President Trevor Knittel says, "TDLS enables the direct high-speed measurement of many important process gases, including combustion by-products, impurities and oxygen in many chemical and refining operations. ASI’s TruePeak TDLS analyser utilises a very promising and proprietary peak area integration method that offers both high measurement accuracy and repeatability compared to other commonly used products.”
Yokogawa acknowledges that ASI has a unique and superior TDLS technology and that it is expected to enter wide use. In order to win a greater share of this market, Yokogawa has decided to establish a Laser Analytical Division within its US subsidiary as a core unit for the industrial automation environmental and measurement business.
Yokogawa’s strategy
Satoru Kurosu, senior vice president of the Industrial Automation Business Headquarters, says, “To achieve the top position in the global industrial automation market by 2010, Yokogawa has announced its VigilantPlant vision for the ideal plant, and this TDLS technology enhances our VigilantPlant solution portfolio.”
Kurosu also says, “We consider that technologies and products focusing on energy saving and environmental conservation will continue to play an important role. Therefore, we aim to expand our line-up of sensors used in analytical processes, and to enhance our capability to offer solutions over the entire lifecycle of a plant that also address the need for energy saving and environmental conservation.”
Yokogawa expects that the TDLS market will be worth $150 million by 2013 and plans in that year to have sales of $30 million and the largest market share.
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