AUTOMATION OF ROUTINE SOIL EXTRACTION PROCEDURES
Roger Hill, Brian K. Taylor, Tony Kay, Ian McKellar · Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis · 2002
Hill Laboratories have developed an automated system for soil extractions. Pre-dried, ground soils are loaded into a robot. The robot dispenses soils into beakers, doses reagents, mixes for a specified time period, automatically filters, and delivers extracts into test tube racks for subsequent instrumental analysis. The robot processes one sample per minute; each sample can be analyzed for four tests. (Olsen P, Cations, Sulfate-S and online pH) The robot uses a continuous process; incorporating a washing station to prepare the beakers for reuse. This robot is configured to analyze soils on a volume basis. The robot also determines volume weight so it can be programmed to analyze soil on a weight basis if required. The robot more than doubles operator productivity. It should have application for other routine soil analyses with short extraction times (<30 minutes) such as Mehlich-3 and Bray-2.