Determination of vanadium, molybdenum and tungsten in complex matrix samples by chelation ion chromatography and on-line detection with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry Original Research Article

In this work, two kinds of chelating resin, bis(2-aminoethylthio)methylated resin (BAETM) and γ-aminobutyrohydroxamate resin (γ-ABHX) were synthesized. Of these, the former has a hydrophobic skeleton, and the latter a hydrophilic skeleton. The functionalities of each were 0.91 and 2.21 mmol g−1, respectively. The chelating behavior of these resins towards vanadium, molybdenum and tungsten as a function of pH was studied. To perform trace metals analysis in complex matrices, a hyphenated method-chelation ion chromatography (CIC) coupled on-line detection with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was developed. With a BAETM resin column (5×0.4 cm i.d.) as the separator, a sample volume of 20 μl, nitric acid (pH 1.5) as the eluent and a flow rate of 1 ml min−1, the detection limits for the determination of vanadium, molybdenum and tungsten were lower than 0.05 ng ml−1and the linear ranges were up to 100 ng ml−1 for each element. By increasing the injected sample volume to 250 μl, the resin concentrator improved the detection limit to 0.01 ng ml−1. For the determination of these elements (5 ng ml−1 for each) spiked in artificial sea water samples, γ-ABHX resin column (3×0.6 cm i.d.) demonstrated well resolved peak separation between the analytes and the matrix elements—calcium and magnesium, by using sodium nitrate (10 ml, 10−4 M) as the eliminator.