Targeting the determination of iron using various flow-based approaches

Iron species are vital for most living organisms, participating in a plethora of biological processes. However, if present in excess, they can also display disruptive effects. Therefore, monitoring different forms of iron in water, soil, and biological fluids has become of particular interest in environmental and food analytical chemistry and also in toxicology, aiming for new methods to improve the limit of detection, use of low toxicity reagents, and reduce reagents consumption and effluents production. As flow analysis techniques can be quite useful for this purpose, our group has been involved in some studies to propose different approaches to target this determination in different samples. Some of these methods were focused on a new chromogenic reagent, others on tackling challenges posed by a particular sample, while other aimed for iron speciation. In this scenario, a discussion of some of the flow-based methods will be discussed in this lecture, involving the determination of iron (III) or iron (II), iron complexes, and also the challenges associated with the particular type of sample, either water, soil, or biological matrices.