Improved acid digestion of environmental and biological samples and coal for the determination of both arsenic and selenium by hydride generation

Conference · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:191715

Huang, Z ^[1]

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1. Brooks Rand, Ltd., Seattle, WA (United States)

Hydride generation (HG) is a good sample introduction technique for the determination of As and Se, and has been widely used in atomic spectrometry. Several instrumental developments have been made in the hydride-generation system, however, sample digestion (pretreatment) is still the critical step in the FIG determination of As and Se in solid and semi-solid samples. The general digestion procedure with mineral acids is not suitable for complete decomposition of refractory organic compounds of As and Se present in some organic-rich materials, and then does not allow for the measurement of both As and Se in most environmental and biological samples by HG. In this work, some well-designed experiments on the wet digestion in open system have been done with a temperature controlled sand bath. The oxidation performances of some mixtures of mineral acids and salts in different combinations have been investigated and evaluated with environmental and biological samples. With the use of HNO{sub 3}/HClO{sub 4} mixing with either the high-boiling-point acids (H{sub 2}SO{sub 4}, H{sub 3}PO{sub 4}) or some mineral salts(Mg(NO{sub 3}){sub 2}, MgSO{sub 4}, Na{sub 2}SO{sub 4}, NaH{sub 2}PO{sub 4}), the complete mineralization of organoarsenic and organoselenium compounds in the samples can be readily achieved while a dewatered step is in the employ of the digestion program. An improved wet digestion procedure with HNO{sub 3}/HClO{sub 4}/H{sub 3}PO{sub 4}(or Mg(NO{sub 3}){sub 2}, or MgSO{sub 4}) was investigated and optimized for the determination of both As and Se in sediment, soil, coal, fish and plant materials by HG-AAS. This method has been evaluated by the analyses of CRMs, including PACS-1, BCSS-1, MESS-11 DORM-1. DOLT-1. NIST-1632b, BCR-40 and BCR-181 for both As and Se, and good agreements with the certified values were obtained.

• OSTI ID: 191715
• Report Number(s): CONF-941098--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
40 CHEMISTRY
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ARSENIC
BIOLOGICAL MATERIALS
CALIBRATION STANDARDS
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
COAL
QUANTITATIVE CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
SAMPLE PREPARATION
SEDIMENTS
SELENIUM
SOILS