Determination of water content and calorific value of peat by near i.r. spectroscopy

Near infrared reflectance (n.i.r.) spectroscopy is used for the determination of water and calorific value in peat. Partial least squares modelling in latent variables (PLS) has been used to correlate n.i.r. spectra to water content and calorific value. Separate calibrations for water and calorific value have been compared with the simultaneous calibration for both properties. The result of the simultaneous calibration for water is better than the result obtained in the separate calibration. This indicates that the inclusion of an extra meaningful variable will stabilize the calibration.