Magnetic resonance analysis in real time, industrial usage mode

Claim 1

In a nuclear magnetic resonance system for industrial process monitoring comprising: (a) means for accessing successive samples from an industrial process, placing them in a sample measuring region and discarding successive such samples from said sample measuring region, (b) means for applying a base magnetic field to the sample measuring region to effect precession of sample nuclei and for applying a resonant excitation pulse to the sample measuring region to modify the precession and means defining receive antenna coil means and signal translating means interacting with a sample in said region to detect relaxation of the sample at the coil means as a free induction decay signal which is measurable as a free induction decay curve via said signal translating means, (c) means for digitizing the free induction decay curve and automatically analyzing the digitized curve to zero axis intercepts of Gaussian and exponential components of the decay curve and extracting a ratio of the intercept of one of said components to the sum of intercepts of said components, the improvement comprising the provision therein of means for extending each of the said decay curves established in multiple repetitions of the said curve establishment and automatic analysis sequence by Hahn spin-echo re-focus/decay to capture data related to a further sub-component(s) of the sample for enhancing the accuracy of the ratio determination of (c) above and/or to identify proportion of the further sub-component(s).