Emergence of the Field- Portable Instrumentation Market
With the availability of a wide range of field-portable
instrumentation the market for them is slowly but surely emerging. This
approach is quietly getting accepted as it has made possible performing
high-quality and rapid analyses at the site of investigation itself. There
is off course much ramifications in the nature of business and logistics
involved before a lab becomes truly portable. Before we go further in
discussing the challenges of field- portable instrumentation it would be
prudent enough to understand what is exactly a field-portable
instrumentation
What
is Field-Portable Instrumentation?
The
answer is it refers to the instruments which is fast, lightweight, small
enough to carry, functions on a simple infrastructure and lastly, is adept
in generating laboratory quality data. Each of these factors is crucial.
To cite an example, say an environmental laboratory conducts on site
analyses. The objective of such analysis using field- portable instrument is
that it should be capable of generating effective data. This translates into
the fact that the data quality generated should accomplish the data quality
objectives (DQOs) of the project. If it fails in this endeavour then there
is no use of it Some of the categories of instruments which falls under the
ambit of field-portable instruments include the follwing.
- Gas chromatographs(GCs) and micro-GCs,
- Mass spectrometers(MS)
- Continuous flame ionization detectors (FIDs)
- Photoionization detectors(PIDs)
- Extractive Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometers
- Filter-based and other infrared (IR) spectrometers
- Xray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometers
- Selective monitors
- Hand-held Raman Spectrometer to be used for organic solids and
liquids
Application
of Field-Portable Instrumentation
It is the environmental laboratories which have the maximum oppoutunity for
applying field analyses. Some of the core areas where there is utilisation
of Field-Portable Instrumentation includes the following.
- Health and safety/industrial hygiene.
- Source/process monitoring
- Brownfields
- Odor investigations
- Site characterization remediation
- Fence line monitoring
- Emergency response situations.
Future
of Field-Portable Analysis
Industry pundits forecast a a wide range of applications for field-portable
analysis, especially in the environmental industry. This expectation is
fostered by the ability to get results as good as or sometimes even better
than a fixed lab along with a strong evidence that the field- portable
instruments are offering fast and effective analytical support.
Users of these instruments must be able to make quick decisions based on
dependable and representative data.
From the perspective of an environmental laboratory. The field-portable
instrumentation has seen good consolidation. This has resulted that the
market is quite competitive with no single player having a major pie. There
are still a number of factors which poses a challenge to the advantages of
field-portable analytical approaches getting recognised. This factors are
acceptance of field analytical data, regulatory issues and reference
methods. However, these issues are getting resolved with field analytical
professionals putting sustained efforts to remove the hurdles.
To conclude labs will have to latch on to the bus to field lab or watch
this potential roll over them, as in the coming days all the projects are
going to continue to shift towards field analysis.
