Global Materials Characterization Market, 2017

Increased Spending in Petrochemical, Food, and Pharmaceutical Sectors will Fuel the Market Growth

Material characterization technologies included in this research service include physical testing analyzers, thermal analyzers, particle characterization systems, and rheometer & viscometer. Materials characterization involves describing the properties and features of a material to study the material. The market covers a range of end users including pharmaceuticals, petrochemical, polymers, automotive, food, fragrances, and cosmetics. Physical testing analyzers include flash point, distillation, cloud point, vapor pressure, freeze point, color, and pour point analyzers.

Thermal analysis instrument segment includes differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyzers, thermogravimetric analyzers (TGA), differential thermal analyzers, simultaneous thermal analyzers (STA), thermomechanical analyzers (TMA), dynamic mechanical analyzers (DMA), and other thermal analyzers. North America, Europe, APAC, and Rest of World (R0W) are the geographies included in the research. Different product segment is driven by different end users. For example, thermal analyzer segment is driven by increasing research requirements on energy-efficient materials, and physical testing analyzer segment is thriving due to product development and quality control applications in the automotive industry.

Overall market will be driven by the growth in petrochemical, food, and pharmaceutical sectors. There has been tremendous improvement in the user interface and operation of material characterization equipment over the last decade. Investment in emerging economies and green energy initiatives in the chemical & petrochemical sectors will fuel the market growth. The rise in environment- and safety-related regulations is diverting chemical companies’ investments toward developing energy-efficient products. Research activities involve development of renewable and eco-friendly feedstock and chemical products.

Chemical & petrochemical sector is the largest end-user sector of physical testing analyzers and thermal analyzers. It is applied in refinery for manufacturing, quality control, and other proprietary applications. Demand from the APAC countries and green energy initiatives will drive this market growth. Inline process viscometers will be in high demand with a year-on-year growth rate approximately 6.5%. The instrument is used to stabilize refining applications, if not used, there will be significant cost loss due to the viscosity challenges of a particular fuel. It is also significant in automotive applications for combustion applications of a vehicle. Polymer industries are continuously substituting metals, glass, paper, and other traditional materials in various applications due to their lightweight, strength, and design flexibility along with low cost.

The polymer sector will drive the demands of different material characterization instrument. Differential scanning calorimeter holds the largest portion of the calorimeter market. Lot of thermal analysis research is performed on saving the existing energy and utilizing alternate energy. Particle characterization market is driven by the regulatory guidelines in food and pharmaceutical industries. Physical property analyzers are driven by the market need to drive production efficiency in refineries and pipelines. These analyzers are becoming much more efficient, as their maintenance requirements are significantly reduced which improves customers’ process downtime.