Application of flowing stream techniques to water analysis. Part I. Ionic species: dissolved inorganic carbon, nutrients and related compounds

This paper summarizes the most relevant manuscripts issued from 1990 to date referred to water analysis using flowing stream techniques. Concretely, reported flow methods applied to the determination or monitoring of inorganic analytes (viz. carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and silicon species) together with some related compounds to assess water quality in drinking, rain, underground, marine, river, estuarine, waste and industrial samples are reviewed. For the first time, the most widespread flow techniques of analysis described in the literature (viz. segmented flow analysis (SFA), continuous flow analysis (CFA), flow injection analysis (FIA), sequential injection analysis (SIA), multicommuted FIA (MCFIA), multisyringe FIA (MSFIA), along with the different exploited injection modalities are included in the same review.