Abstract: A device for determining the moisture content of a material which includes a micro wave heating unit (1) for heating a sample of the material which is under investigation and a weighing device (3) for weighing the sample during heating and providing signals representing a series of measurements of the weight of the sample at specific times. The weighing device is connected to a processing unit (4) which is a microprocessor and which includes a computer (9) which produces signals representing the loss of weight of the sample in the course of heating and which computes the parameters of a asymptotic function and which represents the loss of weight of the sample in the course of time. There is also a calculator (11) for determining the differences between two asymptotic values, and a comparator (12) for comparing the differences with a reference value representing the acceptable uncertainty in regard to the moisture content of the material.

Abstract: A sample of the steel to be analyzed is subjected to spark discharging, the optical emission of the sparks is directed onto a diffraction grating in order to separate the light emission corresponding to the element to be metered and a capacitor is charged by a current respective of the intensity of this radiation; after every elementary discharge of the integration circuit, the charge of the capacity is converted into the form of a digital data representative of the intensity of the line selected; during a spark discharging cycle, the number of intensities is determined of which the value is included in each one of a plurality of contiguous channels, in order to set up an intensity frequency diagram as a function of the intensity; the curve representing the diagram is smoothed and the content of dissolved element is determined as a linear function of the value of light intensity corresponding to the peak of the gaussian part of the smoothed curve; and the content of precipitated element is determined by summi