Modified Lanthanum–Zeolite for Sensitive Electrochemical Detection of Heavy Metal Ions

Establishment of an Indirect Competitive Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Method for the Detection of Heavy Metal Cadmium in Food Packaging Materials

Heavy metals in food packaging materials have been indicated to release into the environment at slow rates. Heavy metal contamination, especially that of cadmium (Cd), is widely acknowledged as a global environment threat that leads to continuous growing pollution levels in the environment. Traditionally, the detection of the concentration of Cd relies on expensive precision instruments, such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). In this study, an indirect competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ic-ELISA) based on a specific monoclonal antibody was proposed to rapidly detect Cd. The half-inhibitory concentration and detection sensitivity of the anti-cadmium monoclonal antibody of the ic-ELISA were 5.53 ng mL-1 and 0.35 ng mL-1, respectively. The anti-Cd monoclonal antibody possessed high specificity while diagnosising other heavy metal ions, including Al (III), Ca (II), Cu (II), Fe (III), Hg (II), Mg (II), Mn (II), Pb (II), Zn (II), Cr (III) and Ni (II). The average recovery rates of Cd ranged from 89.03-95.81% in the spiked samples of packing materials, with intra- and inter-board variation coefficients of 7.20% and 6.74%, respectively. The ic-ELISA for Cd detection was applied on 72 food packaging samples that consisted of three material categories-ceramic, glass and paper. Comparison of the detection results with ICP-AES verified the accuracy of the ic-ELISA. The correlation coefficient between the ic-ELISA and the ICP-AES methods was 0.9634, demonstrating that the proposed ic-ELISA approach could be a useful and effective tool for the rapid detection of Cd in food packaging materials.

Recent advances in the synthesis and applications of mordenite zeolite - review

Among the many industrially important zeolites, mordenite is found to be interesting because of its unique and exceptional physical and chemical properties. Mordenite (high silica zeolite) is generally prepared by the hydrothermal method using TEA+ cations. TEA+ cations are the best templating agent, though they can create a number of issues, for instance, generating poison and high manufacturing cost, wastewater contamination, and environmental pollution. Hence, it is necessary to find a mordenite synthesis method without using an organic template or low-cost template. In this review, a number of unique sources were used in the preparation of mordenite zeolite, for instance, silica sources (rice husk ash, silica gel, silica fumes), alumina sources (metakaolin, faujasite zeolite) and sources containing both silica and alumina (waste coal fly ash). These synthesis approaches are also based on the absence of a template or low-cost mixed organic templates (for instance, glycerol (GL), ethylene glycol (EG), and polyethylene glycol 200 (PEG)) or pyrrolidine-based mesoporogen (N-cetyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium) modifying the mordenite framework which can create unique properties. The framework properties and optical properties (indium-exchanged mordenite zeolite) have been discussed. Mordenite is generally used in alkylation, dewaxing, reforming, hydrocracking, catalysis, separation, and purification reactions because of its large pore size, strong acidity, and high thermal and chemical stability, although the applications are not limited for mordenite zeolite. Recently, several applications such as electrochemical detection, isomerization, carbonylation, hydrodeoxygenation, adsorption, biomass conversion, biological applications (antibacterial activity), photocatalysis, fuel cells and polymerization reactions using mordenite zeolite were explored which have been described in detail in this review.