Abstract: 4120 A. Introduction

1. Background and Applications

Air-segmented flow analysis (SFA) is a method that automates a large number of wet chemical analyses. An SFA analyzer can be thought of as a “conveyor belt” system for wet chemical analysis, in which reagents are added in a “production-line” manner. Applications have been developed to duplicate manual procedures precisely. SFA was first applied to the analysis of sodium and potassium in human serum with a flame photometer as the detection device, by removing protein interferences with a selectively porous membrane (dialyzer).