Innovative Method Development: Evaluating Opportunities to Reduce Labor Requirements and Headaches in TKN Analysis

Increasing regulatory requirements and lean staffing are impacting compliance laboratories today, driving many to look for ways to operate more efficiently. Labs look for improvement through innovation - streamlining processes and operations. Method improvement is a key part of these efforts, and innovation is found in many of the new methods being developed.Methods for analysis of Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen are fraught with chemical hazards, laborintensive digestion and distillation steps, and inconsistent results. Recently an innovative method for simplified TKN analysis has been developed to streamline procedures and provide accurate results. This method was developed by combining existing procedures for nitrogen analysis while eliminating handling of hazardous chemicals for digestion steps.This paper presents this simplified method and highlights several areas where innovation was applied to reduce labor requirements, time, cost, and hazardous chemicals. The results demonstrate that simple innovation and method advancements can produce excellent results while reducing headaches and labor in laboratories.