Flow Injection Tutorial

It was while developing a method for determining bitterness in beer that the seed for Zone Fluidics was sown. This assay involves a simple solvent extraction into hexane followed by uv detection. Several FIA papers using dynamic phase separation were in the literature but Global FIA was unsuccessful in getting a dynamic phase separator reliable and robust enough for routine industrial analyses; wetting out of the separating membrane was usually the reason for failure. Wolcott was working on the project and he finally resorted to breaking down the extraction into its unit operations - extraction and phase separation - and then optimizing each as independent operations. These unit operations were arranged around the multi-position valve of a typical SIA manifold. Judicious use of immiscible phases such as air zones were employed to increase the versatility of the required zone manipulation steps. When reviewing the enhanced versatility achievable by clustering sample manipulation, chemistry, and detection unit operations around a selection valve and the idea that a mixture of equilibrium and non-equilibrium steps could be included in the same manifold, Marshall, Wolcott, and Olson decided that this new approach warranted its own moniker and coined the term Zone Fluidics. Details of the Zone Fluidics concept can be found here . This development also spurred the development of a new logo for the company.