NIR-Online process analyzers rely on the following principle of operation. Light is constantly emitted from a tungsten halogen lamp on a sample. The diffusely reflected light from the sample is directed to a dispersive element (stationary grating) and the resulting spatially distributed monochromatic light is detected by means of a diode array usually consisting of 256 diodes. Each diode collects the intensity of a certain wavelength range depending on its spatial position. These individual diode signals are commonly referred to as pixels. Division of measured intensity (I) by intensity of a white reference spectrum (I0) as well as conversion of pixels to a wavelength scale results in a so-called spectrum, I/I0 plotted against nm or cm-1. Chemometric software predicts molecular properties of the sample from the measured spectra after according calibration.