Market Profile: Industrial Mass Spectrometers

Industrial mass spectrometers are grouped into three product categories: leak detectors, residual gas analyzers (RGAs), and process mass spectrometers. Leak detectors account for the largest share of the market, followed by RGAs. The subgroup of process mass spectrometers makes up the smallest portion of the market, but is expected to post solid growth because of new rules for flare stack combustion from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

Applications for leak detectors lie in power generation industries as well as aerospace, automotive, pharmaceutical, and medical device industries. RGAs, in turn, are small mass spectrometers that typically use quadrupole technology. These probe-like instruments generally are installed on vacuum systems such as scanning microscopes to monitor the quality of the vacuum. RGAs are also used to detect trace levels of impurities. 

Process mass spectrometry consists of quadrupole and magnetic-sector technologies and is mainly used in the oil refining industry for process control automation. Applications continue to expand into new areas particularly for gas purity applications in industries such as pharmaceuticals, food and beverage, and electronics manufacturing. 

Process mass spectrometry by region for 2018.

Market size and growth estimates were adopted from TDA’s Industry Data, a database of technology market profiles and benchmarks covering laboratory and process analytical instrumentation that are updated quarterly. It also includes data from the 2019 Instrument Industry Outlook report from independent market research firm Top-Down Analytics (TDA). For more information, contact Glenn Cudiamat, general manager, at (310) 871-3768 or glenn.cudiamat@tdaresearch.com. Glenn is a market research expert who has been covering the analytical instrumentation industry for more than two decades.