Online anion exchange column preconcentration and high performance liquid chromatographic separation with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry detection for mercury speciation analysis

Heyong Cheng; Chunling Wu; Lihuan Shen; Jinhua Liu; Zigang Xu

doi:10.1016/j.aca.2014.04.042

Online anion exchange column preconcentration and high performance liquid chromatographic separation with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry detection for mercury speciation analysis

Anal Chim Acta. 2014 May 30:828:9-16. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2014.04.042. Epub 2014 Apr 26.

Authors

Heyong Cheng¹, Chunling Wu², Lihuan Shen², Jinhua Liu³, Zigang Xu²

Affiliations

¹ College of Material Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hangzhou Normal University, 16th Xuelin Street, Hangzhou 310036, China. Electronic address: hycheng@hznu.edu.cn.
² Institute of Analytical and Applied Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
³ College of Material Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Hangzhou Normal University, 16th Xuelin Street, Hangzhou 310036, China; Qianjiang College, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 310036, China.

PMID: 24845810
DOI: 10.1016/j.aca.2014.04.042

Abstract

A hyphenated method for mercury speciation analysis by the coupling of high performance liquid chromatography and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry with the online strong anion exchange column (SAX) preconcentration was developed. The Hg analytes (Hg(+), MeHg, EtHg and Hg(2+)) were absorbed on the SAX column preconditioned with sodium 3-mercapto-1-propanesulfonate, and then rapidly eluted (less than 16s) by 5μL 3% (v/v) 2-mercaptoethanol. The enrichment factors of 1025 for Hg(+), 1084 for MeHg, 1108 for EtHg and 1046 for Hg(2+) were obtained using 6mL sample in a 1.5-min enrichment procedure. Rapid separation of the four mercurial compounds was achieved within 5min on a 50-mm C18 column using 0.5% (v/v) 2-mercaptoethanol as the mobile phase. The detection limits for Hg(+), MeHg, EtHg and Hg(2+) were 0.015, 0.010, 0.009 and 0.016ng L(-1), each, and the relative standard deviations of peak height and peak area (5ng L(-1) for each Hg species) were all below 5%. Mercury speciation in three freshwater, two drinking water and two seawater samples were then analyzed by the proposed method. MeHg and Hg(2+) concentrations down to 0.14 and 0.56ng L(-1) were detected in the drinking waters.

Keywords: Anion exchange; HPLC–ICP-MS; Mercury speciation; Preconcentration; Water.