Abstract

Without any doubt analytical laboratories have an essential role in environmental protection due to the fact that they takes an active part in the monitoring pollutants present in air, water or soil. From the other side, the analytical activity is involved in the generation of toxic waste what is associated with the use of not eco-friendly reagents and solvents. For these reasons, green analytical chemistry (GAC) was introduced in 2000 in order to remove/reduce the side-effects of analytical practices on operators and the environment. The ideology of GAC is focused on reduction of the negative impact of chemical analyses on the environment, developments in instrumentation and methodologies, and also enabling analytical laboratories to be sustainable in terms of costs and energy. To help analysts to conduct laboratory in accordance with ideology of GAC, the guidelines and the principles of green chemistry have been introduced. Also, components of green analysis are well known and are presented in many critical reviews. In connection with emergence of the ideology and the principles of GAC, several trends in analytical chemistry occurred. Trends toward simplification, automation, portability and miniaturization are well recognized. Without any doubt a high degree of simplification, portability and automation is intrinsically involved in miniaturized systems. Different steps of the analytical process have been subjected to automation, miniaturiza­tion and portability. The integration of sample preparation, analytical separation and detection has allowed the development of fully miniaturized systems. The miniaturization of analytical systems is linked to other challenges in analytical chemistry including automation, portability and greening of analytical procedures. Moreover, rapidity, economy, improved analytical perfor­mance and the size decrease of analytical systems are among the drivers for miniatur­ization.

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Authors (4)