ABSTRACT
Toxicological studies have shown that the degree of toxicity of some elements depends on the chemical form in which the element is present. Chromium (III) is considered as an essential micronutrient for human whereas chromium (VI) is a potentially carcinogenic agent. So the speciation of inorganic chromium in environmental samples is required for accurate assessment of pollution levels. The chromium content in natural water is usually very low, and a preconcentration is often necessary prior to the determination.
A sensitive and selective preconcentration and speciation procedure is developed for the determination of trace and ultra trace amounts of chromium species by utilizing chemiluminescence (CL) and flame atomic absorption spectrometric (FAAS) techniques. The performances of amino silica-gel, amino sol-gel, mercapto silica-gel beads and metal oxides for solid phase extraction of chromium are examined either in column or batch type studies. Considering the advantage of concentrating Cr(III) and Cr(VI) ions separately simply by adjusting the pH of the medium, amino silica-gel resin is chosen in this study. The influences of different experimental parameters on the separation and preconcentration of chromium species such as pH, eluent concentration, flow rate, particle size of the resin are investigated.
Chemiluminescence detection studies are performed by using the catalytic effect of Cr (III) on the reaction between luminol and hydrogen-peroxide and Cr (VI) is detected after reduction to Cr (III). Luminol and H2O2 concentrations and the pH of the medium are optimized to increase the sensitivity of the system.
Chemiluminescence is inherently a very sensitive technique. When a preconcentration step is included in the CL mesurement of very low concentrations of chromium is possible to determine. Indeed, a 25-fold enhancement in sensitivity of chromium ions is achieved after incorporating amino silane&ndash / gel colums in the system and 0.2 & / #61549 / g/L of chromium (corresponds to the concentration of chromium in natural waters) was measured.
A fully automated FI-CL system is designed that allows all necessary operations to be performed on-line. This system allows the pre-conditioning of micro-columns with different buffer solutions / adsorption of chromium species in micro-columns / washing these columns to remove interfering matrix components / elution of the species with minimum volume / transporting the species and chemiluminescence reagents to the cell / and, finally, cleaning of all pertinent conduits in the FIA-system in order to prevent carry-over between individual samples.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12604979/index.pdf |
Date | 01 June 2004 |
Creators | Surdem, Sedat |
Contributors | Volkan, Murvet |
Publisher | METU |
Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | M.S. Thesis |
Format | text/pdf |
Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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