Abstract
A method for the determination of gold at very low levels in waters is presented. The method involves batchwise pre-concentration of gold from 1 l of water at pH 3–4 onto 0.1 g of activated charcoal by shaking 5 min and subsequent treatment of the activated charcoal by instrumental neutron activationγ-spectrometry. Activated charcoal quantitatively adsorbs ionic and colloidal gold from solutions prepared with distilled water and also from natural surface waters spiked and equilibrated with these two forms of gold. Three ion-exchange resins were evaluated for pre-concentration purposes; ionic gold removal was quantitative but colloidal gold removal was incomplete. Electrodeposition at a carbon fibre electrode gave similar results. The charcoal pre-concentration technique was tested on solution containing 198Au tracer and a total concentration of 1 μg l −1. The limit of detection of total gold (ionic and colloidal) for the carbon adsorption/neutron activationγ-spectrometry procedure is 0.3 ng l −1. The method was used to determine gold in surface waters from auriferous regions.
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