Super serpentine reactors in SIA. A comparative response and precision study

Dispersion and zone overlapping play a very important role in SIA. Its control is the key to both the development of a methodology and its optimization. A tiron-iron (III) complex was used to investigate the influence super Serpentine reactors have on these two parameters using sensitivity and precision as the two measurement criteria with a spectrophotometer as detector. The SIA manifold is simple and the complexation reaction between tiron and iron (III) is fast enough such that dispersion and zone overlapping are the major role players contributing to the concentration gradient between the sample and reagent. Six different reactor types - a straight tube, a helically coiled tube and four super Serpentines I, II, III, and IV of four different lengths with an i.d. of 0.76 mm - were compared.