Flow Injection Tutorial

Fast analysis of standard solutions containing inorganic cations, inorganic anions and organic anions with a short (8cm) capillary was developed using SI as the solution handling system (Wuersig 2006).

The analysis of anions and cations was carried out in rapid sequence simply by switching the polarity of the high voltage supply. In the same apparatus the mixture of chloride, sulphate, nitrate, oxalate, tartrate, maleate, succinate, gluconate and benzoate was resolved and quantified within 30 seconds. As a detector, capacitively-coupled contactless conductivity was used.

There is no doubt that a combination of SI with fast CE using short capillaries is a powerful technique. Yet so far, most of the literature on FI/SI/CE hyphenation has been carried out in an academic environment, and thus the acceptance of FI-CE and SI-CE has been slow for solving real life problems, as compared to more readily applied techniques such as FI/SI AAS or FI/SI MS. More exploration is in order.