We report an automated procedure for the inline separation of two immiscible liquids based on a porous polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) capillary and a small number of inexpensive electronic components. By monitoring the light transmitted through fluid streams at the two outlets of the separator and iteratively adjusting a needle-valve located at one outlet until smooth time-invariant signals are observed at both outlets, the separator is capable of establishing complete liquid/liquid separation within minutes. Using mixtures of water and toluene as a test system, near quantitative recovery of the two liquids was achieved over a wide range of flow conditions without detectable cross contamination at either outlet. In a twenty-four hour test run, departures from complete separation occurred just three times, and on each occasion complete separation was automatically restored within ninety seconds. Further tests on other liquid/liquid mixtures showed that the automated separator is capable of rapidly and reliably inducing the separation of aqueous–organic, aqueous–fluorous and organic–fluorous mixtures, making it a versatile tool for numerous applications in fluidic analysis, synthesis and purification.

中文翻译：

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使用光学监控的多孔毛细管自动分离不混溶的液体†

我们报告了基于多孔聚四氟乙烯（PTFE）毛细管和少量廉价电子元件的两种不混溶液体在线分离的自动化程序。通过监视在分离器两个出口处通过流体流传输的光，并迭代地调整位于一个出口处的针形阀，直到在两个出口处均观察到平稳的时不变信号，分离器能够在内部建立完全的液/液分离分钟。使用水和甲苯的混合物作为测试系统，可以在宽范围的流动条件下实现两种液体的接近定量回收，而在任一出口都没有可检测到的交叉污染。在24小时的测试运行中，完全分离的发生仅发生了3次，并在每种情况下在90秒内自动恢复完全分离。对其他液/液混合物的进一步测试表明，自动分离器能够快速可靠地诱导分离有机，水性，有机氟和氟的混合物，从而使其成为在流体分析，合成和分析中的众多应用的多功能工具。纯化。