1.1 This practice covers requirements for the validation of measurements made by laboratory, field, or process (online or at-line) infrared (near- or mid-infrared analyzers, or both), and Raman analyzers, used in the calculation of physical, chemical, or quality parameters (that is, properties) of liquid petroleum products and fuels. The properties are calculated from spectroscopic data using multivariate modeling methods. The requirements include verification of adequate instrument performance, verification of the applicability of the calibration model to the spectrum of the sample under test, and verification that the uncertainties associated with the degree of agreement between the results calculated from the infrared or Raman measurements and the results produced by the PTM used for the development of the calibration model meets user-specified requirements. Initially, a limited number of validation samples representative of current production are used to do a local validation. When there is an adequate number of validation samples with sufficient variation in both property level and sample composition to span the model calibration space, the statistical methodology of Practice D6708 can be used to provide general validation of this equivalence over the complete operating range of the analyzer. For cases where adequate property and composition variation is not achieved, local validation shall continue to be used.

1.2 Multiple physical, chemical, or quality properties of the sample under test are typically predicted from a single spectral measurement. In applying this practice, each property prediction is validated separately. The separate validation procedures for each property may share common features, and be affected by common effects, but the performance of each property prediction is evaluated independently. The user will typically have multiple validation procedures running simultaneously in parallel.

1.3 Results used in analyzer validation are for samples that were not used in the development of the multivariate model, and for spectra which are not outliers or nearest neighbor inliers relative to the multivariate model.

1.4 When the number, composition range or property range of available validation samples do not span the model calibration range, a local validation is done using available samples representative of current production. When the number, composition range and property range of available validation samples becomes comparable to those of the model calibration set, a general validation can be done.