Evaluation of selenium behavior in thermospray flame furnace atomic absorption spectrometry

Abstract

The behavior of selenium in thermospray flame furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (TS-FF-AAS) was studied and the developed procedure was applied for selenium determination in biological materials after microwave-assisted sample digestion. A sample volume of 600 μL was introduced into the hot metallic Ni tube at a flow rate of 0.4 mL min −1 using water as carrier. The limit of detection obtained for Se was 8.7 μg L −1 (3 s blank/slope, n = 10), which is 95-fold better than that typically obtained using FAAS. The applicability of the TS-FF-AAS procedure was evaluated for selenium determination in biological materials. Certified reference materials of pig kidney (BCR 186) and mussel (GBW 08571) were analyzed and a t-test had not shown any statistically significant difference at a 95% confidence level between determined and certified values for both materials. The procedure was successfully applied for determination of Se in pig kidney and shellfish. It was demonstrated that TS-FF-AAS improved the performance of FAAS (flame atomic absorption spectrometry) for determination of Se.