Flow Injection Analysis in the Undergraduate Laboratory

Flow Injection Analysis (FIA) is one of the most popular continuous-flow techniques and its versatility and simplicity can help to bring automation to teaching laboratories; however, the small number of educational papers about this technique indicates that the adoption of FIA procedures in the undergraduate curriculum has been scarce. In this work the fundamentals of FIA are presented using simple laboratory experiments. Some drawbacks that can hinder the employment of FIA by first-time users are discussed. Practical strategies to overcome these hindrances are suggested in order to facilitate the use of FIA for undergraduate laboratories.