With the decline of the natural gas reserves in the North Sea over the last decade, the United Kingdom has had to look towards alternative sources for the supply of electricity to the nation
At the heart of an industrial society is the thermal power plant that supplies the electricity that we the consumer takes for granted both in the business world and at home.
No matter whether the plant is nuclear of fossil fuel driven, its safe and reliable operation is critical and must be guaranteed.
Ion chromatography (IC) can be used to ensure that no hazardous substances enter the sensitive circuit of the power plant and can be used to determine the ionic constituents of aqueous media accurately and rapidly all the way down to nanogram per litre level.
IC systems from Metrohm are custom made for the application of use and the cations determined typically include alkali metals besides ammonium and organic amines.
A typical instrument configuration would be the Metrohm MIC 4 Advanced Modular IC System with 838 advanced sample processor (revised for trace analysis).
A huge advantage of the Metrohm IC instruments is the use of Metrohm inline sample preparation (Misp) whereby the liquid handling is performed by flexible sample changers and the highly accurate Dosino technology reduces user interaction and allows facilitation by even semi skilled personnel.
The calibration is carried out inline and is thus independent of the user and the ambient conditions while the technique benefits from extremely short start up times of circa ten minutes.
The Metrohm methodology uses custom sample racks that allow the use of the customer's own sample containers (0.5-500mls) to reduce handling of the sample and minimise errors and cross contamination of the analytes of interest.
The use of a strictly separated delivery of ultra-pure water and an external cleaning position for the needle reduces cross contamination and a new trap column further eliminates impurities in the ultra pure water delivery post installation.
Sixty years of leading experience in ion analysis and two decades of outstanding research in ion chromatography ensure that the reliability and robustness of the instrument are assured.
The Metrohm IC instruments work only with electronic suppression for cation analysis - as chemical suppression would lead to the formation of hydroxides causing precipitation of the transition metals - with no costly replacement of suppressor membranes required to ensure that the ongoing running costs of the IC system are minimal.
The quality and design of the Metrohm pump and detector help ensure the lowest detection limits attainable in the marketplace.
