Flow Injection Tutorial

Earlier FIA developments at CENA

A few months after Jarda had returned to Denmark, I left CENA for an eight-month training with him and Elo in Lyngby. The focus of the research was on flow injection potentiometry and nice results were obtained [8]. Back home, I noticed that the seed sowed at CENA yielded nice seedlings, yielding a productive harvest during the following years. In fact, Berga's team became larger, the laboratory was more complete and, most importantly, novel concepts, innovations and improvements in flow analysis were continuously proposed.

Regarding staff, several colleagues (B.F. Reis, M.F. Gine, J. Mortatti, L.C.R. Pessenda, E.A.N. Fernandes and A.O. Jacintho) were included in Berga's team. The scientific collaborations of S.S. Jørgensen from Denmark and J.R. Ferreira from Sao Paulo, as well as the support from CENA technicians were essential. This aspect, together with the short-term visits of prominent scientists (J. Ruzicka, E.H. Hansen, D. (Jack) Betteridge, H. Pardue, M. Pinta, H.V. Malmstadt, M. Trojanowicz, B.R. Kowalski, just to mention some of them) was the main driving force towards the continuous development of flow analysis at CENA.

Outstanding conceptual achievements such as the confluence configuration [18,1599], zone merging [23], zone trapping [415] and zone sampling [145] were proposed and applied to real analyses. Different detection techniques (e.g. FAAS [43], ICP OES [206], further gravimetry [8643]), and ingenious strategies for in-line separation / concentration by SPE [110], LLE [22] and isothermal distillation [50] (nowadays named membraneless gas diffusion) were exploited. Novel analytical procedures involving real-time manifold modifications for column replacement [81] or for sample stopping under continuous pumping [132] were also developed. These later aspects led to the inception of the commutation concept in flow analysis [1060].

As a consequence of these achievements, Brazilian researchers participated in 12.4 % of the 251 publications dealing with FIA published in the 1975-1981 period and mentioned in Elo's database.