Simultaneous determination of osmium, ruthenium, copper and lead by electrocatalytic voltammetry

Thallium: A Polluting Metal of New Generation. Its Voltammetric Determination in Herbal Medicines in Presence of Metal Interferences

The present paper reports a new application: the voltammetric determination in herbal medicines of ultra-trace thallium(I), in the presence of lead(II), tin(II) and antimony(III) as interfering metals, by square wave anodic stripping voltammetry (SWASV). A conventional three-electrodes voltammetric cell was employed with a stationary hanging mercury drop electrode (HMDE) as working electrode and a platinum electrode and an Ag|AgCl|KClsatd. electrode as auxiliary and reference electrodes, respectively. The supporting electrolyte was 0.5 mol L−1 ammonium citrate buffer pH 6.5 + 7.3·10−3 mol L−1 EDTA-Na2. The analytical procedure was verified by the analysis of the standard reference materials: spinach Leaves NIST-SRM 1570a and tomato leaves NIST-SRM 1573a from National Institute of Standards and Technology. Precision and trueness, expressed as relative standard deviation and relative error, respectively, were generally lower than 7% in all cases. Once set up on the standard reference materials, the analytical procedure was transferred and applied to herbal medicines samples—Taraxacun officinale weber, Eucalyptus globulus and Harpagophytum procumbens DC—sold on the market. A critical comparison with spectroscopic measurements is also discussed.

Development of a reliable analytical method for the precise extractive spectrophotometric determination of osmium(VIII) with 2-nitrobenzaldehydethiocarbohydrazone: Analysis of alloys and real sample

The proposed method demonstrates that the osmium(VIII) forms complex with 2-NBATCH from 0.8molL(-1) HCl at room temperature. The complex formed was extracted in 10mL of chloroform with a 5min equilibration time. The absorbance of the red colored complex was measured at 440nm against the reagent blank. The Beer's law was obeyed in the range of 5-25μgmL(-1), the optimum concentration range was 10-20μgmL(-1) of osmium(VIII) as evaluated by Ringbom's plot. Molar absorptivity and Sandell's sensitivity of osmium(VIII)-2NBATCH complex in chloroform is 8.94×10(3)Lmol(-1)cm(-1) and 0.021μgcm(-2), respectively. The composition of osmium(VIII)-2NBATCH complex was 1:2 investigated from Job's method of continuous variation, Mole ratio method and slope ratio method. The interference of diverse ions was studied and masking agents were used wherever necessary. The present method was successfully applied for determination of osmium(VIII) from binary, ternary and synthetic mixtures corresponding to alloys and real samples. The validity of the method was confirmed by finding the relative standard deviation for five determinations which was 0.29%.

Determination of lead, cadmium, copper, and nickel in the tonghui river of beijing, china, by cloud point extraction-high resolution continuum source graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry

Heavy metal contamination of water has become an important problem in recent years. Most hazardous heavy metals exist in environmental water in trace or ultra-trace amounts, which requires establishing highly sensitive analytical methods. In this research, quantitative analyses were performed using high-resolution continuum source graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry combined with cloud point extraction (CPE) to determine Pb, Cd, Cu, and Ni levels in environmental surface water. By optimizing the CPE conditions, the enrichment factors were 29 for Pb, Cd, and Cu and 25 for Ni. The limits of detection (LOD) were 0.080, 0.010, 0.035, and 0.014 μg L for Pb, Cd, Cu, and Ni, respectively. The sensitivity of the method is comparable with those reported in previous investigations using various methods and improves outcome by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude compared with the LODs of the current national standard methods of China. Our method was used to determine Pb, Cd, Cu, and Ni in 55 water samples collected from the Tonghui River, which is the principal river in the urban area of Beijing, China. The results indicated that the distributions of the four heavy metals in the Tonghui River were related with the environments. The levels of Pb and Ni exhibit increasing trends along the river from upstream to downstream possibly due to the existence of some chemical factories in the downstream area. Lead, Cd, Cu, and Ni averaged 13.9, 0.8, 46.8, and 38.5%, respectively, of the total amount of the determined heavy metals. The levels of the four heavy metals conformed to the Environmental Quality Standards for Surface Water (Grade I) of China. This work provides a reliable quantitative method to determine trace-amount heavy metals in water, which lays a foundation for establishing standards and regulations for environmental water protection.