Prof. Elia Psillakis from the School of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, is the leading author in two recent milestone papers published in the scientific journal TrAC-Trends in Analytical Chemistry του εκδοτικού οίκου Elsevier. The specific journal has an Impact Factor of 12.296, and ranks first among other 83, in the field of Analytical Chemistry.
The first publication entitled "The Ten Principles of Green Sample Preparation" is authored by Prof. Elia Psillakis (corresponding/leading author) and co-authors D.I. López-Lorente (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain) , F. Pena-Pereira (University of Vigo, Spain), S. Pedersen-Bjergaard (University of Oslo, Norway), V.G. Zuin (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil) and S.A. Ozkan (Ankara University, Turkey). It sets out the principles of a new field, that of green sample preparation, which aims to minimize the environmental impact of laboratory analyses, and more specifically analytical practices related to sample preparation techniques.
The ten principles determine the properties and characteristics of materials, reagents, equipment, and practices that must be used in order for a methodology to be defined as green. This publication overturns an older and widespread 2013 publication that excluded sample preparation techniques from the field of Green Analytical Chemistry. The paper "The Ten Principles of Green Sample Preparation" is available on the internet from 13/1/2022 and is already one of the most downloaded articles of this journal.
The second article entitled "AGREEprep - Analytical Greenness Metric for Sample Preparation" (AGREEprep - Measurement of "green" performance of sample preparation techniques) is authored by Prof. Elia Psillakis and Prof. M. Tobiszewski (Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland) (leading authors) and co-authors W. Wojnowski (Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland) and F. Pena-Pereira (University of Vigo, Spain). This work proposes for the first time a metric tool that assesses the environmental impact of sample preparation techniques. It is based on 10 criteria that are evaluated according to their effects that laboratory analytical practices can have on humans and the environment. The work is supplemented with a user-friendly open access software available to all analytical chemists.
