Speciation of Eu3+ bound to humic substances by time-resolved laser fluorescence spectroscopy (TRLFS) and parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC)

Abstract

The bioavailability and toxicity of metal ions including radionuclides in the biosphere are greatly influenced by their speciation. Humic substances (HSs) are important constituents of various soil and water systems and have significant impact on the speciation and mobility of metal ions because of their high affinity to metal ions.In this study, the speciation of europium (Eu3+), a chemical homologue of trivalent actinides, with HSs collected from various origins was investigated by time-resolved laser fluorescence spectroscopy (TRLFS). The difficulties associated with the separation of the contribution of different Eu3+ species due to overlapping spectra or similar fluorescence lifetimes were addressed and mitigated by applying a multi-mode factor analysis, parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC), which resulted in the number, spectra, decay curves and relative fluorescence intensity profiles of different Eu3+ species. Subsequently, the interpretation of the Eu3+ species, was tackled by principal component analysis (PCA) and partial linear square (PLS) regression to deduce the nature of the Eu3+ species by taking into account the physicochemical properties of the HSs.Three factors corresponding to different Eu3+ species were obtained at 70μM Eu3+ for all HSs investigated except for one humic acid. One of the factors corresponded to free Eu3+ ion interacting with HSs via diffusion. The remaining two factors were thought to be Eu3+ bound to HSs: one bound to acidic functional groups of HSs and the other to the sites of HSs influenced by the carbon backbone structures. It was also found that the latter factor exhibited strong energy transfer from the excited Eu3+ center to HSs. At lower Eu3+ concentration (10μM), two factors having similar fluorescent characteristics to those of the second and third factors were obtained.