Autoanalysis, a Program Package for Laboratory Automation and Process Analysis

Abstract

The appearance of microprocessors and computers represented a significant leap in the automation of analytical methods. They have gradually been integrated into analytical instrumentation, especially in data acquisition and treatment. However, given chemists’ general lack of experience in connecting computers to instrumentation, the widespread use of automation has been evolving very slowly. The development of informatics and the increase in power of computers have been facilitating and giving flexibility to automation, allowing the development of systems according to the needs of the different analytical methods.
The appearance of various commercial programs has facilitated the design of automatic systems according to the analytical needs. However, still very few programs allow designing automatic systems based on flow techniques in a versatile way.
This paper aims to review the software package called AutoAnalysis, which facilitates the combination of many devices and instruments according to the needs of the different analytical methods. Although it was initially intended for automation based on flow techniques, such as the FIA, SIA, MSFIA, LOV, etc., it has also demonstrated its effectiveness in other fields, like its application to chromatographic techniques, capillary electrophoresis, etc. This program is not only useful for laboratory work, but it can also be used to monitor industrial processes, such as the operation control of a bioreactor.
To describe the high possibilities of AutoAnalysis, we have decided to do its description in several papers:
1. AutoAnalysis: Introduction and background. This paper describes the software design, how it should be used by different users without interfering with each other, and how to configure the system to connect with the various instruments and devices of the system being developed. A table is included describing how the program has been used over the years, from 1999 to 2026.
2. AutoAnalysis: Programming. Once an automated system has been configured for a new application, this paper describes how to program the system, how to save the methods, and how to retrieve applications described in previous papers.
It describes how to define procedures, define variables, design calibration systems, create loops to analyze different samples after repeating the procedure several times for each one, and how to execute the developed methods.
Thus, it describes how to establish criteria for discriminating noise from analytical signals, how to obtain the derived curves using the Savitsky-Golay technique, how to obtain and save the spectra for each experimental point, and how to manage the calibration systems.
3. AutoAnalysis: Methods and data can be organized in Works. By organizing methods, data, and configuration in Works, these can be related, and it is a way of organizing different projects to facilitate the organization of the user. AutoAnalysis form designer allows developing autonomous methods that can be used without the need to have AutoAnalysis installed.
This paper includes an appendix describing various devices that can be used in the application of automated methods controlled by the AutoAnalysis program.