Abstract
The nation-wide and global need for environmental restoration and waste remediation (ER & WR) presents significant challenges to the analytical chemistry laboratory. The expansion of ER & WR programs forces an increase in the volume of samples processed and the demand for analysis data. To handle this expanding volume, productivity must be increased. However, the need for significantly increased productivity faces a contaminant analysis process which is costly in time, labor, equipment, and safety protection. Laboratory automation offers a cost effective approach to meeting current and future contaminant analytical laboratory needs.
The proposed demonstration will present a proof-of-concept automated laboratory conducting varied sample preparations. This automated process also highlights a graphical user interface that provides supervisory control and monitoring of the automated process. The demonstration provides affirming answers to the following questions about laboratory automation:
Can preparation of contaminants be successfully automated? Can a full-scale working proof-of-concept automated laboratory be developed that is capable of preparing contaminant and hazardous chemical samples? Can the automated processes be seamlessly integrated and controlled? Can the automated laboratory be customized through really convertible design? Can automated sample preparation concepts be extended to the other phases of the sample analysis process?
To fully reap the benefits of automation, four human factors areas should be studied and the outputs used to increase the efficiency of laboratory automation. These areas include: 1) laboratory configuration, 2) procedures, 3) receptacles and fixtures, and 4) human-computer interface for the full automated system and complex laboratory information management systems.
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