Kyue-Hyung Lee

Development of column-pretreatment chelating resins for matrix elimination/multi-element determination by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry

Chelating resins, two kinds of iminodiacetate derivatives (IDA) of cross-linked chitosan (CCS) were synthesized and investigated for adsorption capacity, matrix elimination and collection/concentration of analytes by a column pretreatment in a multi-element ICP-MS determination method. The adsorption behavior of 54 elements at the 10 ng ml(-1) level on chitosan derivatives in a packed mini-column was systematically examined. Almost 30 kinds of metal ions were recovered quantitatively at pH 5 with CCS-HP/IDA (cross-linked chitosan possessing N-2-hydroxypropyl iminodiacetic acid groups) column. Compared with available chitosan-iminodiacetate resin, CHITOPEARL CI-03, the recovery of the metal ions such as Cu, Pb and La is satisfactory with CCS-IDA (cross-linked chitosan possessing N,N-iminodiacetic acid groups) and CCS-HP/IDA using 2 M nitric acid as an eluent, which may be attributed to the difference of cross-linking and macroporous structure. Compared with Chelex-100, the adsorption efficiency is in the order: Chelex-100 > CCS-IDA > CCS-HP/IDA, especially in the chelating ability for alkaline earth metals. The resin with a longer spacer (CCS-HP/IDA) showed higher adsorption selectivity between heavy metal ions and alkaline earth metals at pH < 7. The separation efficiency of the major matrix cations in seawater (Na. K, Mg, Ca) has also been investigated, and matrix interference was negligible even in a seawater sample at pH 5 with CCS-HP/IDA. The recoveries of Mn at pH 5 with CCS-HP/IDA or Chelex-100 were almost 100%. However, those of Mg with each resin were 4 or 98%, respectively. The adsorption capacities of synthesized CCS-HP/IDA for Cu(II), Pb(II) and La(III) were 0.90, 0.65 and 0.34 mmol g(-1), respectively. Therefore, the chelating chitosan resins developed are applicable to the pretreatment of trace amounts of elements in various kinds of water samples.

Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric determination of heavy metals in sea-water samples after pre-treatment with a chelating resin disk by an on-line flow injection method

A new on-line flow injection (FI) pre-treatment system using a disk-type chelating resin (5 mm diameter, 0.5 mm thickness) was developed for the simultaneous multi-element determination of trace metals in sea-water samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). A chelating resin possessing an iminodiacetate (IDA) functional group was used for the collection of trace elements and the elimination of alkali and alkaline earth metals in highly concentrated salt solution. A 1 ml volume of a sea-water sample (pH 5.5) was applied to the chelating resin disk. Considering the removal efficiency for Ca, 50 mM ammonium acetate buffer solution (pH 5.5) was chosen as a sample carrier. The enriched trace metals were eluted with 0.1 M nitric acid and the eluate flowed into the ICP-MS system. The processing time for one sample was < 6 min (350 s). One of the important observations is the possibility of working with a low recovery, even lower than 50%. For example, several elements such as Mn, Cr, As, Mo, Ba and U, the recovery of which was < 50% in a batch-wise method, showed good linearity and reproducibility. The proposed method was evaluated by analyzing two kinds of sea-water certified reference materials, CASS-4 and NASS-5. Analytical data for eight heavy metals, V, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Mo, Cd and U, obtained from the present study agreed well with the certified values.