By purifying field samples, this technology can be used for monitoring of water quality for applications in chemical, manufacturing, and farming industries.

Because salt and metals can mask the signature of a variety of organic molecules (like amino acids) in any given sample, an automated system to purify complex field samples has been created for the analytical techniques of electrospray ionization/mass spectroscopy (ESI/MS), capillary electrophoresis (CE), and biological assays where unique identification requires at least some processing of complex samples. This development allows for automated sample preparation in the laboratory and analysis of complex samples in the field with multiple types of analytical instruments.