Determination of soil pH using a laboratory robot

✍ Scribed by N. Brenes; M.N. Quigley; W.S. Reid

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 739 KB
• Volume: 310
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0003-2670
• DOI: 10.1016/0003-2670(95)00145-p

✦ Synopsis

A commercial laboratory robot has been programmed to prepare up to 144 soil samples for pH determination. The soils are manually scooped into tubes (as part of our receiving service>, and loaded into racks capable of holding 40 tubes each. The robot determines the weight of soil in each tube (if required), picks up a pipette and adds water, vortex mixes, centrifuges, and finally picks up a pH probe and determines the pH of the supematant. AI1 weight and pH data are collected by the robot, and stored on a diskette ready for transfer to a LIMS. Fifteen (15) soil samples per hour can be processed in this way.