Inline Filtration and Treatment for Ion Chromatographic (IC) Methods

Automation & Innovation for Sample Preparation
Oral Presentation

Prepared by K. Nash, S. Giraud, L. Ramirez, J. Davis, D. Tran, P. Parmar
Orange County Water District, PO Box 8300, Fountain Valley, CA, 92728-8300, United States


Contact Information: [email protected]; 714-378-3356

ABSTRACT

Sample matrix is a continual problem for IC instruments. Dissolved organic materials and sediments/other solids can cause clogs and shorten the lifetimes of analytical columns. This leads to increases in instrument downtime and maintenance that is both expensive and time consuming. Historically, these issues have been solved by manual pretreatment. Pretreatment can entail performing dilutions, manual filtration and/or cartridge treatment. While this approach reduces the wear and tear on instruments, it results in a high consumable budget and a large amount of manual labor.
The Orange County Water District (OCWD) lab has developed a system in which samples are filtered and treated by C18 cartridges inline. This approach has saved the lab both resources and time. These modifications have been validated via comparison between manually treated and inline treated samples as well as sensitivity studies, method verification, and analyst demonstrations of capability (DOC). The presentation will provide an overview of the hardware modifications, validation studies and cost/time savings seen by the lab since implementation.