Abstract
A method for daily monitoring of yttrium and rare earth elements (YREEs) in seawater using a cheap flow injection system online coupled to inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry is reported. Toyopearl AF Chelate 650M® resin permits separation and concentration of YREEs using a simple external calibration. A running cycle consumed 6 mL sample and took 5.3 min, providing a throughput of 11 samples per hour. Linear ranges were up to 200 ng kg−1 except Tm (100 ng kg−1). The precision of the method was <6% (RSDs, n = 5), and recoveries ranged from 93% to 106%. Limits of detection (LODs) were in the range 0.002 ng kg−1 (Tm) to 0.078 ng kg−1 (Ce). Good agreement between YREEs concentrations in CASS-4 and SLEW-3 obtained in this work and results from other studies was observed. The proposed method was applied to the determination of YREEs in seawater from the Jiulong River Estuary and the Taiwan Strait.
Highlights
Due to their similar chemical properties, yttrium and fourteen rare earth elements (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu), collectively named yttrium and rare earth elements (YREEs), have always been studied together
The commercially available FIAS-400 (Perkin-Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA) [29,31,32,33] and SeaFAST (Elemental Scientific, Omaha, NE, USA) [36] flow injection (FI) system has been used in many studies devoted to the development of online determination of YREEs in seawater when coupled with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)
When the loading rate was 2.0 mL min−1, response from Ce dropped the most, to about 89% (Supplementary Information Table S1) of the peak area achieved at 1.5 mL min−1
Summary
Due to their similar chemical properties, yttrium and fourteen rare earth elements (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu), collectively named YREEs, have always been studied together. Liquid-liquid extraction [5,15,16,17], co-precipitation [18,19,20,21], and solid-phase extraction [22,23,24,25,26,27] techniques have been utilized Among these procedures, solid-phase extraction using chelating absorbents is becoming popular due to its wide selectivity of YREEs, low risk of contamination, freedom from toxic reagents and its simplicity for interfacing with ICP-MS to permit online determination when using flow injection (FI) as sample preconcentration systems. The commercially available FIAS-400 (Perkin-Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA) [29,31,32,33] and SeaFAST (Elemental Scientific, Omaha, NE, USA) [36] FI system has been used in many studies devoted to the development of online determination of YREEs in seawater when coupled with ICP-MS. The developed method was used for the determination of YREEs in estuarine and coastal seawaters
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