Speciation of arsenic and chromium metal ions by reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography

The speciation of arsenic [As(III) and As(V)] and chromium [Cr(III) and Cr(VI)] was carried out by high performance liquid chromatography. The column used was Econosil C18 (250×4.6 mm i.d., particle size 10 μm). The mobile phases consisted of water–acetonitrile (80:20, v/v) for arsenic and 10 mM ammonium acetate buffer (6.0 pH)–acetonitrile (10:90, v/v) for chromium speciation separately and respectively. The detection was carried out by UV–Vis at 410 nm and atomic absorption spectrometer (AAS) respectively and separately. The values of α and Rs of As(III) and As(V) species were 1.4 and 1.5 respectively while the values of α and Rs for Cr(III) and Cr(VI) were 1.35 and 0.2 respectively. The effect of the acetonitrile percentages was also carried out on the speciation of arsenic only. The relative standard deviation and limit of detection were in the range of 0.01–0.02 and 0.4–1.0 μg/ml respectively.