Liquid handling components

The liquid fuel handling components of the fuel system include the fuel filler pipe, fuel tank, fuel pirmp, and the fuel supply and return lines. The fuel tank is a low pressure, low hydrocarbon emission vessel designed to contain both the liquid and vapor phases of the fuel. An electric pump located inside the fuel tank is used to transfer liquid fuel from the tank to the engine. The fuel in the tank is suctioned from a small reservoir in the tank which minimizes liquid level transients caused by vehicle motion. 

STABREX is easier and simpler to use compared to any other oxidant available for industrial water treatment. The product is pumped directly from returnable transporters (PortaFeed Systems)17 with standard chemical feed equipment. Previously, the only practical ways to apply bromine were to oxidize bromide solutions on-site with chlorine in dual liquid feed systems, or with one of the solid organically-stabilized bromine products applied from sidestream erosion feeders. The former is cumbersome and complex, and the latter is prone to dusting and difficult to control. Other oxidants require complex handling and feed of toxic volatile gases, unstable liquids, multiple-component products, or reactive solids. Simplicity in use results in reduced risk to workers and to the environment. 

A robotic system enables mobility of the reactors. The components of a robotic system include (i) a manipulator or end effector (ii) a controller and (iii) robot arms. Robots may also be mounted as a stationary platform, a gantry mechanism where the robot is suspended from a bridge-like frame, or on a linear track drive. A variety of robots exist for both laboratory and industrial use [75,76], Laboratory robots are generally dedicated to either liquid handling or pick-and-place operations. 

The ability to miniaturize assays to the sub-microliter level is largely dependent on the precision of liquid-handling systems. Modern pipetting and dispensing systems- enable components to be reproducibly added in volumes in the nanoliter range to thousands of samples per plate. The EVOscreen system includes a specially designed M2N unit which is able to reformat samples stored in any conventional format, such as 96-well plates, to... 

Fig. 8.4 Hardware components of the ProteinChip System. The ProteinChip Arrays (1) are arranged in bioprocessors to match the 96-well microtiter plate format (2). Samples can be applied using a customized Biomek 2000 liquid-handling robot...

In consideration of LC as an on-line sensor, ideal device characteristics would be compactness, speed, very low maintenance, self-containment and low solvent consumption. Compactness is not a given here, albeit the fact that the chips themselves are very small. It is the peripheral system surrounding the chip to which attention needs to be paid in order to minimize footprint. Unlike liquid handling for CE and CEC microchips, hydrodynamic flow components involve pumps and valves, for which more effort is required to miniaturize. We have touched on current advances in these areas already, but extensive development in miniaturization and integration of hydrodynamic fluid handling components is still forthcoming. The following is envisioned. 

Automated solvent extraction is very efficient and economical (only a fraction of the organic solvent needed for manual procedures is used by the FI A method), and more environmentally acceptable than manual methods because no solvent vapors can escape into the laboratory atmosphere from a closed FI A system. Since very small volumes of solutions are used—less than 1 mL per determination—the hazards associated with the use of inflammable solvents are reduced. It must be borne in mind, however, that certain solvents might attack pump tubing and Perspex or PVC components of the system, and therefore the compatibility of liquids handled with the manifold materials used should always be checked (see Chapter 5 and Section 6.1). 

---