Patent ID: 8912795

Claim:
A method for analyzing the contents of a liquid in a non-ferrous metal container, said method comprising: a. providing an NMR spectrometer and an NMR probe configured to accept at least a portion of the container, wherein said metal container has a wall thickness up to about 3.5 inches (poor conductor lead, nickel-chromium) good conductor would be max 250 microns, silver, gold, aluminum, copper; b. positioning the container or a liquid-containing portion of the container within a data collection region of the NMR probe; c. establishing a homogeneous static medium-strength magnetic field across the data collection region; d. applying a radio frequency to said container high enough to obtain a spectrum that provides sufficient information to analyze the contents of the container, but low enough to provide sufficient penetration into the metal container to create magnetic resonance in the contents of the container; e. collecting NMR data and generating a Fourier-transformed NMR spectrum; and f. analyzing one or more peaks in the NMR spectrum, thereby analyzing one or more contents of the container.