Fast speciation of mercury in seawater by short-column high-performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to inductively coupled plasma spectrometry after on-line cation exchange column preconcentration.

A simple and fast method for trace speciation analysis of mercury (Hg(2+)), methylmercury (MeHg(+)) and ethylmercury (EtHg(+)) in seawater has been developed by short-column high-performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS) after on-line cation-exchange column (CEC) preconcentration. The analytes were firstly adsorbed on the CEC without any extraneous reagent, and then were eluted rapidly (within seconds) and completely with a very low concentration of l-cysteine solution, which provides the conveniency for the on-line coupling of the preconcentration method and detection technique. To our best knowledge, it is for the first time to employ the CEC preconcentration technique to trap all of the three mercury species simultaneously at their positive charged status for the purpose of speciation analysis. Under the optimized conditions, a very high preconcentration factor up to 1250 has been obtained with 30mL sample solution, which leads to the very low detection limits of 0.042ngL(-1) for Hg(2+), 0.016ngL(-1) for MeHg(+) and 0.008ngL(-1) for EtHg(+) (as Hg), respectively. With the established method, three seawater samples were also analyzed, and all the three mercury species have been found in each sample, albeit at a very low concentration.

[Adsorption behavior of exogenous thorium on soil contaminated by rare earth industries].

The adsorption behavior of exogenous thorium on soil was studied to evaluate the contaminated risk on soil. The adsorption capacity, equilibrium time, distribution coefficient and desorption ability were investigated by the experiments of static adsorption. The strong adsorption ability of exogenous thorium on soil samples was observed by high adsorption ratio (> 92%) and low desorption ratio (< 5%) in equilibrium, and the biggest distribution coefficient was over 10(4). The adsorption capacity and equilibrium time were related to soil properties. According to the results of adsorption, Freundlich equation (r > or = 0.9167) and Elovich equation (R2 > or = 0.8980) were primely fit for describing the thermodynamics and kinetics of the adsorption of exogenous thorium on soil samples, respectively, which indicated that the adsorption was belonged to the nonlinear adsorption, and was affected by the diffusion of thorium on soil surface and in mineral interbed. Sequential extraction procedure was employed to evaluate the bound fractions of exogenous thorium adsorbed on soil samples. Based on the extracted results of thorium fractions, exogenous thorium was presented in the labile nonresidual fractions (over 58%) at the low initial concentration (10(-7) - 10(-6) mol x L(-1)), and nonresidual fractions enhanced with the increase of the initial amount, meanwhile more exogenous throium was transferred to the stable residual fractions.