Determination of trace amounts of beryllium in water samples using cold-induced aggregation microextraction method

The increasing use of beryllium in the atomic energy program and the highly toxic nature of its compounds require highly sensitive and reliable analytical procedures for its detection and determination in environmental samples. In this research cold-induced aggregation microextraction (CIAME), a green solvent extraction process, is applied for sensitive determination of trace amounts of beryllium in aqueous samples. This method can be applied for the sample solutions containing high concentration of salt and water miscible organic solvents. Beryllium was extracted to the ionic liquid phase as the eriochrom cyanin r complex. The extracted rich phase is diluted with ethanol, and its absorbance is measured at 554 nm by a spectrophotometer. The effects of different operating parameters such as type and amount of IL and the surfactant, temperature and the other parameters were studied. Under optimum conditions a linear calibration graph in the range of 5–200 µg L-1 of beryllium in the initial solution with R2 = 0.998 was obtained. Detection limit was 1.05 µg L-1 and the relative standard deviation (R.S.D.) for 50 µg L-1 of Be was 1.3% (n = 10), respectively. Finally, the proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of beryllium in real water samples.