When French company, Sidel, developed its ACTISTM 48 machine for the high-speed production of barrier PET bottles for the beverage industry, it found that the existing instruments for measuring oxygen permeation or oxygen transmission rate (OTR) were too slow. To solve the problem, Sidel and Systech Instruments, the leading British gas analysis specialist, collaborated on the development of a new, faster method of OTR analysis. The Systech Model 8700, the result of this collaboration, halves the time taken to test the barrier PET bottles.

With the Sidel ACTISTM 48 producing more than 30,000 (thirty thousand) barrier PET bottles per hour, existing test methods were completely inadequate for product qualification and quality tracking, even when statistical methods were used. The new system reduces the test cycle time from 24 to 12 hours but importantly allows up to eleven sample bottles to be tested simultaneously using just one instrument.

At such high production rates, fast product quality testing becomes increasingly important, as do running costs. The new system uses low cost nitrogen as the carrier gas, rather than the more widely used and expensive nitrogen/hydrogen mix and, to minimise downtime and maintenance costs, the oxygen sensor is automatically protected from damage by high oxygen levels.