ANALYTICAL MINIMALISM APPLIED TO THE DETERMINATION OF TRACE-ELEMENTS BY ATOMIC SPECTROMETRY

In analytical minimalism, each stage of the analysis is evaluated to m inimize the time, cost, sample requirement, reagent consumption, energ y requirements and production of waste products. These parameters are often inter-related. If the objective of digestion of biological tissu es, foodstuffs and environmental samples is taken as the complete diss olution of the trace elements, then the time of digestion by conventio nal heating can be reduced considerably to times comparable with press ure digestion using microwave heating. The development of rapid and si mple partial digestion techniques is reviewed. In electrothermal atomi c absorption spectrometry, by assessing the function and time of each stage in the programme; it has been possible to reduce the programme t ime to about 30 s for a number of determinations. Recent developments in fast furnace technology are reviewed, particularly on omission of t he ashing stage and drying with hot injection or high temperatures. Wi th reduction in furnace programme time, the time taken by the autosamp ler (30-35 s) becomes dominant. Developments to reduce this time by 10 -20 s are discussed. In the evaluation of results, minimal time and ef fort by the analyst is ensured by customized computer programmes. The programmes, variants of one or two basic programmes, are adapted for e ach determination to retain the value of standards, to correct for bla nks and to allow conversion from gl(-1) to mol l(-1).