The DOE Office of Technology Development Robotics Program recently presented an idea for increasing efficiency and cutting costs to an interagency group set on those goals for the nation's waste cleanup. Contaminant Analysis Automation technology was presented to the Interagency Environmental Technology Office, a group of federal agencies that fosters public-private partnerships to stimulate technological innovation and promotes U.S. leadership in global environmental stewardship. (See IETO article, this issue.) A multi-disciplinary team is developing CAA and commercializing standardized laboratory analysis systems that automate the manual characterization procedures currently used. The automation developed in this program will reduce the cost of sample analysis by improving efficiency of existing facilities and improving sample turn around time. Quality will also improve by reducing variance caused by human operators. Robotics Program Manager Linton Yarbrough suggested CAA as a mini-project IETO could support as it addresses the common contamination problems of the agencies.
Robert Hollen, the CAA Coordinator for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, discussed the status of technology development and the goals to obtain industry partners for system integration and commercialization. Hollen explained that the basic building block of CAA is the Standard Laboratory Module. SLMs can be used independently or combined as part of a full system into a Standard Analysis Method. A SAM performs a complete laboratory operation from sample preparation and analysis, to data interpretation. Hollen estimated that CAA applies to approximately 60 percent of the remediation samples from site cleanup activities and will provide a cost savings of approximately 50 percent over manual analysis techniques. He also stressed the benefits of CAA in multi-tasking, enabling expendability and flexibility, promoting standardized methods, allowing integration of laboratory operations, and eliminating problems with sample comparability. There are existing modules for analyzing organics, metals, and radionuclides and supporting modules for filtration, solution transfer, and solvent recovery. Hollen also discussed development of a mobile lab for on-site sampling and emphasized the need for a systems integrator and SLM manufacturers. The CAA team will be demonstrating a fully operational and integrated organic SAM at LANL on May 9-11, 1995.
Rebecca Rubin of the Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded research and development center, presented findings from a study to find contamination problems and laboratory analyses needs that DOE and the Department of Defense have in common. The study focused on identifying the size and scope of the problems and related findings to instrumental techniques. Rubin said the predominant DoD problems are inorganics in soil and groundwater. DOE's problems are radionuclides and inorganics in soil and groundwater. The majority of analytical methods associated with these problems can be accounted for by a handful of analytical techniques. The study determined that the techniques being automated by CAA apply to both DOE and DoD.
CAA is funded by the Robotics Program and coordinated by Los Alamos National Laboratory with support from Sandia National Laboratories, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The program is eager to work with industrial partners to commercialize laboratory automation. Private industries are working with the CAA team through cost-sharing agreements. Several equipment manufacturing companies are working to develop automated sample preparation devices or convert existing devices into standard format.
Information about the demonstration can be accessed on the Internet with Mosaic at CAA Demonstration
