Hydrometer and Digital Refractometer, which one are more accurate?

Hi all,

between hydrometer and digital refractormeter, which 1 are more accurate? Please comment.

It depends on the instrument you are using. In general my experience is that a digital refract is more accurate assuming you use it correctly. A hydrometer requires you to visually read the result from a scale which depends greatly on the individual, the repeatability of the measuring method and variation between one person and another. Other consideration may include the temperature of the sample and digitial refracs are often capable of making this adjustment automatically. But an anolog refrac can also suffer the same variation from person to person conducting the test. If your budget can extend to it, I would go with a digitial refract especially if the test relates to a CCP.



George

Both techniques are very subjective and I would go with refractometer as George rightly stated.

Regards

Ajay Shah

Hi all,

between hydrometer and digital refractormeter, which 1 are more accurate? Please comment.

Without a doubt digital refractometer is more accurate for many reasons. Hydrometers are precision made and unless they are from a reputed supplier are bound to have defects affecting thickness of glass, the radius of curves, the scale position etc. And before using any hydrometer they have to be are tested for its level of error tolerance. Besides hydrometer reading is affected by the temperature, the parallax error, use of right kind of jar etc. On the other hand digital refractometer that is available today are highly sensitive , user friendly and comes with auto temperature correction.

So please go for the digital one.