Automated two-column ion exchange system for determination of the speciation of trace metals in natural waters

Flow Chemistry in Contemporary Chemical Sciences: A Real Variety of Its Applications

Flow chemistry is an area of contemporary chemistry exploiting the hydrodynamic conditions of flowing liquids to provide particular environments for chemical reactions. These particular conditions of enhanced and strictly regulated transport of reagents, improved interface contacts, intensification of heat transfer, and safe operation with hazardous chemicals can be utilized in chemical synthesis, both for mechanization and automation of analytical procedures, and for the investigation of the kinetics of ultrafast reactions. Such methods are developed for more than half a century. In the field of chemical synthesis, they are used mostly in pharmaceutical chemistry for efficient syntheses of small amounts of active substances. In analytical chemistry, flow measuring systems are designed for environmental applications and industrial monitoring, as well as medical and pharmaceutical analysis, providing essential enhancement of the yield of analyses and precision of analytical determinations. The main concept of this review is to show the overlapping of development trends in the design of instrumentation and various ways of the utilization of specificity of chemical operations under flow conditions, especially for synthetic and analytical purposes, with a simultaneous presentation of the still rather limited correspondence between these two main areas of flow chemistry.

Application of flowing stream techniques to water analysis Part III. Metal ions: alkaline and alkaline-earth metals, elemental and harmful transition metals, and multielemental analysis

In the earlier parts of this series of reviews [1,2], the most relevant flowing stream techniques (namely, segmented flow analysis, continuous flow analysis, flow injection (FI) analysis, sequential injection (SI) analysis, multicommuted flow injection analysis and multisyringe flow injection analysis) applied to the determination of several core inorganic parameters for water quality assessment, such as nutrients and anionic species including nitrogen, sulfur and halogen compounds, were described. In the present paper, flow techniques are presented as powerful analytical tools for the environmental monitoring of metal ions (alkaline and alkaline-earth metals, and elemental and harmful transition metals) as well as to perform both multielemental and speciation analysis in water samples. The potentials of flow techniques for automated sample treatment involving on-line analyte separation and/or pre-concentration are also discussed in the body of the text, and demonstrated for each individual ion with a variety of strategies successfully applied to trace analysis. In this context, the coupling of flow methodologies with atomic spectrometric techniques such as flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS), electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry (ETAAS), inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICPMS) or hydride-generation (HG)/cold-vapor (CV) approaches, launching the so-called hyphenated techniques, is specially worth mentioning.

Removal of metallic impurities from mobile phases in reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography by the use of an in-line chelation column

An in-line stripper column packed with iminodiacetate chelation resin is placed between the pump and injection valve and shown to remove metallic impurities from an HPLC system. We used a test procedure based on assessing the relative peak asymmetries of 2,2'-bipyridyl, a chelating analyte and 4,4'-bipyridyl, a non-chelating analyte. Results from use of polyether ether ketone (PEEK) and stainless steel pumps are evaluated. Analytical columns with titanium/PEEK and stainless steel frits are used to assess the role of frits in metallic contamination. We demonstrated that although metal-free pumping systems contribute significantly lower metallic impurities than stainless steel systems, metal is nevertheless present in the mobile phase and the chelating stripper columns were found useful in protecting the analytical columns from contamination. The stainless steel frits were not found to be significant contributors to the contamination.