Sustainability in motion: Investigation of automated gravimetric sample preparation in industrial liquid chromatography

Abstract

For analysis with liquid chromatography (LC), samples and calibration standards generally require a dilution by a factor of 10³ to 10⁶. To guarantee a high accuracy, sample preparation usually employs high-volume pipettes and volumetric flasks for dilution series. Consequently, sample preparation is a prominent driving factor for consumption of solvents in the LC laboratory. Miniaturisation in sample preparation can thus be a means of reducing the required amount of solvent within the laboratory, saving valuable resources. In the context of dilution series, this can be achieved by the use of low-volume dispensing tools, which usually have a higher relative instrument error, resulting in a less accurate overall method. Another approach is the transition to a gravimetric sample preparation, in which the dilution steps are not measured in volume but weight, only depending on the much lower error of the analytical balance. By implementing weighing robots, one can fully automate the sample preparation workflow. This study deals with the comparison of various dilution methods. Gravimetric, robot-aided dilution allows for the reduction of the solvent down to the amount of sample needed for analyses. Including the initial dissolution of the sample, using gravimetric dilution can reliably and repeatedly reduce the required solvent amount by over 90 %, while still generating the same analytical results. Overall, this application leads to significant economic, ecological, social, and technological benefits for the LC laboratory.