This paper proposes a methodology based on short-wave near-infrared spectroscopy to determine the ammonia content of ammonia/water mixtures with ammonia mass fraction in the range 0.35-0.65. Establishing this methodology meant modeling the relationship between the pressure bar (15-25)bar, temperature (20-50)°C and composition of the ammonia-water in the mixture (0.35-0.65 in ammonia mass fraction) with absorbance at 1033nm. The experiments were designed to optimize experimental work. A 2(3) factorial design+3 center points was used to establish and analyze the significance of the variables in the absorbance using analysis of variance (ANOVA). A linear model for absorbance was obtained using the least squares method. The trueness of the results versus the values obtained was assessed using a reference method; density measurement was chosen for this study. The accuracy of the results in terms of root-mean-square deviation (RMSD) was 3.7%. The methodology proposed represents a fast alternative for the "in-situ" measurement of the ammonia composition of ammonia-water mixtures in absorption refrigeration systems.
Keywords: Ammonia content determination; Ammonia/water mixture; Experimental design; Short-wave near-infrared spectroscopy.
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