Krüss has released the new Foam Tester, an instrument for testing liquids with respect to their foam formation and stability behaviour, focusing on quality control for foam prevention and inhibition.
Although being a welcome companion to some products, foam can be a nuisance that must be avoided in many processes such as painting, coating, printing, or lubrication, or when pumping liquids in cyclic processes. For quality control in these processes, it is necessary to exactly determine the foaming behavior of the liquids and foam-inhibiting additives involved.
Focusing on ease of use, the Foam Tester carries out this task in an exactly repeatable manner. The results provide significant information for the foaming capacity of liquids and the decay speed of the resulting foam.
The Foam Tester provides for standardised foam formation by electronically controlled gas flow and for objective result reading thanks to precise, electronic foam height detection. The measurement is carried out automatically and user-independently using easily adaptable automation programs. By recording the total height of foam inside the measuring column and the liquid height beneath the foam, data are related to the absolute amount of foam and give conclusive results for the liquid content and flowout speed (drainage).
In many products and processes, such as cooling lubricants or spray painting, foam formation can directly affect quality. Even unstable foams are a problem when the liquid is in permanent motion and foam is created faster than it decays.
Quality control for such liquids and the defoamers/anti-foamers involved requires capturing the formation and stability of foam even if it breaks down quickly. For this purpose, the Foam Tester records the decay curve with a particularly high data rate. Moreover, automated cycles can reveal whether the foam level decays fast enough or rises from measurement to measurement. To adapt the conditions to the real process, measurements can be carried out temperature-controlled at up to 90°C and with externally connected gases such as carbon dioxide.
The Foam Tester allows preparing the measurement in a few easy steps. The measuring cylinder is placed in the instrument with a single movement using the plug-in unit. The flexible system, which simply uses paper filters to provide the pores for foaming up, enables all components to be cleaned quickly. It also allows one sample to be prepared while another measurement is running to save time. The clear data management with the instrument’s Advance software ensures gapless documentation of raw data and end results.
