Determination of poisonous metals in wastewater collected from paint manufacturing plant using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) system was developed for determination of toxic metals in wastewater collected from local paint manufacturing plant. The plasma was generated by focusing a pulsed Nd:YAG laser at 1064 nm on the solid residue from wastewater collected from paint industry. The concentration of different elements of environmental significance like, lead, copper, chromium, calcium, sulphur, magnesium, zinc, titanium, strontium, nickel, silicone, iron, aluminum, barium, sodium, potassium and zirconium, in paint wastewater were 6, 3, 4, 301, 72, 200, 20, 42, 4, 1, 35, 120, 133, 119, 173, 28 and 12 mg kg−1, respectively. The evaluation of potential and capabilities of LIBS as a rapid tool for paint industry effluent characterization is discussed in detail. Optimal experimental conditions were evaluated for improving the sensitivity of our LIBS system through parametric dependence study. The laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) results were compared with the results obtained using standard analytical technique such as inductively coupled plasma emission spectroscopy (ICP). The relative accuracy of our LIBS system for various elements as compared with ICP method is in the range of 0.03–0.6 at 2.5% error confidence. Limits of detection (LOD) of our LIBS system were also estimated for the above mentioned elements.