Flow injection analysis for calcium in serum,water and waste waters by spectrophotometry and by ion-selective electrode

The Flow Injection technique is shown to provide fast, reliable and sensitive methods for the determination of calcium in various aqueous as well as serum samples; spectrophotometric or potentiometric detection can be used. At sampling rates of 100–110 samples per hour, with 30-μl sample injections, high reproducibility of measurement and low reagent consumption are achieved in both methods. In the spectrophotometric method, the analytical readout is available within 12 s after sample injection at a total reagent consumption of 0.75 ml per analysis. The potentiometric measurement of the calcium activity in serum is placed on a reliable basis by alternating measurements of serum samples and aqueous standards without incurring any non-reproducible changes in potential between aqueous and serum solutions. This permits the simultaneous determination of pH and pCa, the analytical readout being available within XXX s of sample injection. The good agreement between the results obtained with the Flow Injection method and those attained by atomic absorption and EDTA titrations as well as pCa stat-measurements show that the new methods are potentially suitable for routine analysis.     

An automatic system for acidity determination based on sequential injection titration and the monosegmented flow approach

An automatic sequential injection system, combining monosegmented flow analysis, sequential injection analysis and sequential injection titration is proposed for acidity determination. The system enables controllable sample dilution and generation of standards of required concentration in a monosegmented sequential injection manner, sequential injection titration of the prepared solutions, data collecting, and handling. It has been tested on spectrophotometric determination of acetic, citric and phosphoric acids with sodium hydroxide used as a titrant and phenolphthalein or thymolphthalein (in the case of phosphoric acid determination) as indicators. Accuracy better than |4.4|% (RE) and repeatability better than 2.9% (RSD) have been obtained. It has been applied to the determination of total acidity in vinegars and various soft drinks. The system provides low sample (less than 0.3 mL) consumption. On average, analysis of a sample takes several minutes.     

Flie?injektionsanalyse in der Bodenuntersuchung und Pflanzenanalyse

Summary It could be shown that the flow injection technique can be well introduced in labs which need a high sample throughput without any loss of precision. For normal labs with agrochemical tasks it is possible to adapt the proposed flow injection methods for nitrogen and phosphorus. For the determination of ammonia in juices and musts flow injection is better in precision and faster than the conventional methods. The determination of nitrate in plant extracts can be performed without any clean-up of the crude extract by introducing a dialysis cell in the normal flow injection system. For the determination of proline and arginine methods were developed for flow injection. Both are selective with a high precision and crude plant extracts can be injected for determination. Flow diagrams and equipment parameters are described.     

Advanced automation of a flow injection analysis system for quality control of olive oil through the use of a distributed expert system

A new methodology—based on the combination of flow injection analysis and a distributed expert system—is proposed for the on-line chemical quality control of olive oil. This knowledge-based system is in charge of carrying out the flow injection determination of total acidity, peroxide value, and UV spectrophotometric measurements (K₂₃₂ and K₂₇₀), according to EU legislation. On the other hand, the expert system, apart from supervising the correct functioning of the system (devices, clogging, analysis frequency, and so on), performs the definite classification of the analyzed oil by evaluating the oil quality from the values yielded, according to previously established specifications. Satisfactory results have been obtained in the application of this approach to different samples of Spanish olive oil along the storage process. The distributed expert system also allows for the remote control of the analysis process owing to the interconnection of the different nodes by means of a communication network.     

A robust multisyringe system for process flow analysis. Part II. A multi-commuted injection system applied to the photometric determination of free acidity and iron(III) in metallurgical solutions

A new software-controlled volume-based system for sample introduction in process flow injection analysis was developed. By using a multi-syringe burette coupled with one or two additional commutation valves, the multi-commuted injection of precise sample volumes was accomplished. Characteristics and performance of the injection system were studied by injecting an indicator in a buffered carrier. Three configurations were implemented in order to achieve two different tasks: the single injection of a sample in a two- or three-channels manifold, and the dual injection into different streams. The two channel flow system using the single injection was applied to the determination of free acidity in diluted samples containing high levels of iron(III), by employing the single point titration methodology. The precipitation of ferric hydroxide was prevented using the ammonium and sodium salts of oxalate and acetate as buffer titrant. Methyl Red was employed as indicator. The procedure allows determination of acid concentration in solutions with a Fe(III)/H+ molar ratio up to 0.2. Samples with higher Fe(III)/H+ molar ratios were spiked with a known strong acid at dilution. The three-channel configuration was applied to the determination of ferric ions, using, as reagent, a merging mixture of sulfuric acid and potassium thiocyanate. The double injection system was implemented in series in a single (three-channel) manifold in such a way that a different injection volume and a changed reagent were used for each analyte. It was applied to the separated or sequential determination of free acidity and ferric ions. In this configuration, iron(III) was determined using 0.5-0.7% (w/v) sodium salicylate solution as reagent. The systems can operate at up to 100, 84 and 78 injections per hour, respectively. Determinations on synthetic and process samples compared well with the reference values and procedures. Recoveries of 95-102% with a maximum RSD value of 5.4% were found for acidity. The respective values obtained for iron determinations were 96-105% and 4.3%.     

Flow injection method for sulfide determination by the methylene blue method

Flow injection determination of sodium sulfide and hydrogen sulfide in solution through the methylene blue spectrophotometric procedure is described. The carrier streams are N,N-dimethylaniline sulfate (5.4 mM, HCl solution) and iron(m) ammonium sulfate (14.2 mM, HCl solution) and are merged before injection of sulfide (in 0.01 M NaOH). The sampling rate is 210 per hour. The effect of reagent concentrations and interferents on the determination has been investigated.     

A unified ion chromatographic system for the determination of acidity and alkalinity.

A unified ion chromatographic (IC) system was developed for the determination of acidity or alkalinity. Separation column used was a reversed-phase ODS packed column, which had been modified by saturating it with lithium dodecylsulfate. A slightly acidified LiCl (50 mM LiCl and 0.05 mM H2SO4) aqueous solution was used as the eluent. By conditioning the separation column in this way, both H+ and Li+ ions became bound to the stationary phase. Dodecylsulfate groups with Li+ counterions acted as cation-exchange sites for the separation of hydrogen ions (free acidity determination). The remaining dodecylsulfate groups, with H+ counterions acted as a titrant, which reacted with basic species (total alkalinity determination). The acidity or alkalinity of each sample was measured according to the change in conductance from the eluent baseline level. A positive peak was observed from those samples with a free acidity greater than their total alkalinity, due to the separation/elution of free H+ ions. A negative peak was observed from those samples with a free acidity less than their total alkalinity. This was due to an equivalent amount of eluent H+ ions being re-supplied to the stationary phase while the "solid titrant" consumed by the acid-base reaction was regenerated. The retention time for the peak corresponding to the acidity or alkalinity was governed by the retention time for H+ ions in this IC system. Samples with a free acidity greater than 2.25 microM (tested by determination of H+ ions in pure water in equilibrium with atmospheric CO2) could be analyzed by this method. A very similar detection level was obtained for alkalinity (tested by analyzing standard aqueous NaHCO3 solutions). Aqueous solutions of some strong-acid/strong-base inorganic salts were found to be slightly alkaline. This was measured as a percentage, relative to an NaHCO3 solution at the same concentration. Solutions of NaClO4, Na2SO4, NaI, NaNO3, and NaCl, gave comparative alkalinity values of 8.75%, 1.83%, 0.42%, 0.35%, and 0.33%, respectively.     

A Comparison of Two Methods for the Determination of Total Acidity of Humic Substances

Abstract

Two methods of total acidity determination for humic substances are compared: (1) the traditional barium hydroxide method, and (2) a direct potentiometric titration after elution of humic substances through a cation exchange resin. The first method always gave higher results than the second method. A poor analytical precision observed for the former method was attributed to carbonation. Low-molecular-weight phenolic acids of known total acidity were also analyzed by the two methods. The first method most likely underestimates results when weakly acidic compounds do not precipitate as barium salts. The low values shown by the second method are partially due to adsorption of humic material on the resin and, possibly, to insufficient protonation of acidic groups during resin elution.     

Spectrophotometric determination of acidity constants by two-rank annihilation factor analysis

Annihilation of the contribution of one chemical component from the original data matrix is a general method in rank annihilation factor analysis (RAFA). However, RAFA is not applicable for studying the protonation equilibria of multiprotic acids. In this work, a two-rank annihilation factor analysis (TRAFA) method was proposed for determination of the acidity constants of diprotic acids. After recording the electronic absorbance spectra of the acids at different pH, the contributions of both H₂A and A²⁻ were annihilated from the absorbance data, which made feasible the determination of two successive acidity constants. The method was validated by analysis of simulated data and its application to the determination of the acidity constants of calmagite, as a reference compound. A close agreement was obtained between the resulted values by TRAFA and the declared values. Indeed, the method was used for determination of the acidity constants of two new chromenone derivatives in binary solvents mixtures of methanol and water. The effects of changing solvent composition on acidity constant data were explained by linear solvation free energy relationships (LSFER) utilizing solvatochromic parameters.     

Fast microwave-assisted free sugars washing and hydrolysis pre-treatment for the flow injection determination of starch in food

The approach used consists of a flow injection (FI) manifold assisted by a focused microwave digestor for both fast washing of free sugars and acceleration of the hydrolysis step prior to the determination of starch in food. The action of microwaves reduces both the times for removal of free sugars to a 5 min single washing cycle with ethanol/water and that of the subsequent starch hydrolysis to a 10 min step. The sugars formed in the starch hydrolysis are in-line derivatised and photometrically monitored at λ=460 nm. In this way, automation of pre-treatment and determination is achieved with the minimum of both cost and time. The precision of the overall method, expressed as relative standard deviation, is 3.75% and the total analysis time is 38 min. Comparison of the results, obtained in applying the method to flour and bread, is in agreement with those provided by the manual method.     

Determination of total and dissolved amount of iron in water samples using catalytic spectrophotometric flow injection analysis

A flow injection spectrophotometric method has been developed for the determination of dissolved and total amounts of iron in tap and natural water samples. The method for the determination of iron employs a sample acidification step in order to decompose iron hydroxide and iron-complexes into free iron, Fe(III) and Fe(II). The amounts of free iron were detected using a catalytic action of Fe(III) and Fe(II) on the oxidation of N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamine in the presence of hydrogen peroxide. Increase in absorbance of oxidized product was detected spectrophotometrically at 514 nm. The proposed method allows 0.02 and 0.06 μg l⁻¹ of LOD and LOQ, respectively, with relative standard deviation (RSD) below 2%. The accuracy and the precision of the method were evaluated by the analysis of the standard reference material, river water. The developed method was successfully applied to real water samples.     

Dosage de l'acidite libre dans les solutions aqueuses concentrees de plutonium(IV)

A method for the determination of free acidity in concentrated aqueous solutions of plutonium (IV) is described. The plutonium-EDTA complex is formed by addition of the calcium-EDTA complex and the neutralization titration with sodium hydroxide is followed potentiometrically, the equivalence point being determined by a graphical method. The relative standard deviation is 1%. Uranium and iron in small amounts do not interfere. The method is applicable to solutions which are ca, 1 N in acid and which contain up to 200 g Pu/l.     

Three component flow injection analysis with on-line dialysis. Simultaneous determination of free calcium, total calcium and total chloride in milk by flow injection analysis and on-line dialysis

Summary A fast and reliable fully automated three-component flow injection procedure for the simultaneous determination of free calcium, total calcium and total chloride in milk is described where the three components from a single sample injection (30 l milk samples) are determined at a sampling rate of 60 samples per hour. The samples are directed to three different channels by using two dialysers in series. Interferences in the determination of free calcium are eliminated by using a dialyser (first in the series) which also separates the total and free calcium. Free calcium is determined by UV/VIS spectrophotometry at 580 nm and total calcium by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) at 422.7 nm. Interferences from phosphates in milk in the determination of total calcium by AAS are overcome by using a nitrous oxide-acetylene flame with the necessary suppression with potassium ions. A second dialyser in series is used to eliminate interferences, especially the interference of casein, before the dialysed chloride is measured with a coated tubular chloride-selective electrode. The results obtained for the free calcium, total calcium and total chloride in milk at a sampling rate of 60 samples per hour compared well with data obtained by standard methods. With 30 l samples the relative standard deviation for milk samples having different concentrations of free calcium (110–170 mg/l free calcium), total calcium (1000–1500 mg/l total calcium) and total chloride (1000–1800 mg/l total chloride) were better than 0.37, 1.01 and 0.25, respectively.     

Kinetisch-katalytische Bestimmungen in einem zweiphasensystem unter verwendung eines fallrohres

A rather simple method for kinetic-catalytic determinations is described, in which the reactants are dissolved in two immiscible liquid phases. Drops of the heavier phase fall through the lighter one contained in a vertical glass tube. As the drops fall, the reactants come into contact with each other at the interface, thus causing a change in the drops. The length of fall needed for completion of reaction is a measure of the concentration of the catalyst (e.g., decolorization of the drops in the determination of copper by the reaction between iron(III) and thiosulphate). If a gaseous reaction product is formed (e.g., N₂ or O₂) and adsorbed on the falling drop, then the drop stops falling and rises again. The depth of fall or the time needed for the drop to return to the upper end of the tube can be used as a measure for the concentration of catalyst (e.g., determination of thiosulphate with the iodine/azide reaction, or of copper as catalyst for the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide).     

Determination of lead in dialysis concentrates using flow injection hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry

Flow injection hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry (FI-HGAAS) was used for determination of lead in dialysis concentrates. The parameters such as acidity, concentration of oxidising and reducing agents and argon gas flow rate were investigated to reach the best peak height sensitivity. No significant background signal was observed at high salt concentrations. The detection limit, concentration giving a signal equal to three times standard deviation of the blank signal, was 0.7 ng ml⁻¹ for a 500 μl injection volume. Precision of the measurements at the 20 ng ml⁻¹ level was 3.7% R.S.D. The dialysis concentrates analysed by FI-HGAAS were found to have 10-70 ng ml⁻¹ of lead. The same samples were analysed by ETAAS after removing the matrix using solid phase extraction with Chelex 100. The results were in agreement with those obtained by FI-HGAAS.     

Determination of titratable acidity and ascorbic acid in fruit juices in continuous-flow systems

Summary Two continuous-flow systems for the determination of titratable acidity and ascrobic acid in fruit juice samples are described. The assemblies permit on-line dialysis of analytes prior to the reaction step, thus improving selectivity and performing sample dilution. Flow systems are built with a channel carrying the donor phase (sample in both determinations) and another channel carrying an acceptor phase, both of them entering the dialyser. The outcoming stream transporting the dialysed sample fills the valve loop, permitting its injection into a carrier stream which continuously passes through the spectrophotometric detector. For the titratable acidity, acceptor phase and carrier are distilled water, the reagent merged with the carrier channel being a buffered solution of bromothymol blue (pH 7). The analytical signal obtained is then monitored at 616 nm. For ascorbic acid, the acceptor phase was a Fe(III) solution, which reacts with the dialysed analyte to form Fe(II). A buffered solution of o-phenanthroline (pH 4.5) is used as carrier, reacting with Fe(II) to give the analytical signal, which is monitored at 510 nm. Chemical and physical parameters are optimized for both systems. The analytical features of the determination are established. Finally, the proposed procedures are compared with the official volumetric AOAC methods for both parameters. The FIA methods turn out to be suitable for a rapid and accurate control of fruit juice samples, compared with the reference methods; additionally they compete advantageously with the volumetric methods in the case of turbid and highly coloured samples.     

Determination of total primary amines in seawater and plant nectar with flow injection sample processing and fluorescence detection

Flow injection sample processing is used with fluorescence detection for the determination of total primary amines in seawater and nectar. The effects of carrifer stream flow rate and dispersion tube length on sensitivity and sampling rates were studied. Relative responses of several amino acids and other primary amines were determined using two dispersion tube lengths. Linear calibration curves were obtained over the ranges 0–10^-6 M and O–1O^-5 M glycine. Precisions of better than 2% at 10^-6 M and a detection limit of 1 × lO^-8 M glycine were obtained. Applications to the analysis of seawater from the vicinity of a baited lobster trap and diluted nectar samples from Erythrina sp. are described.     

Simultaneous (or sequential) determination of the total polyphenol index (or I280) and density in wines by flow injection

Flow injection methods for the determination of the total polyphenol index, the 'index 280' (I280) and dissolved solids in wines are proposed. The determination of the total polyphenol index is based on the Folin-Ciocalteu reaction in a basic medium and subsequent spectrophotometric detection at 750 nm. The direct measurement at 280 nm of the wine allows the determination of I280 with a simple manifold. The dissolved solids determination is based on the displacement of a light beam when the refractive index of the medium changes. This phenomenon, followed by a change in the absorbance in a photometric detector, usually takes place when an injected sample reaches the flow cell, and it is magnified on passage of the light beam in the radial direction instead of the more common axial direction. The use of a capillary (4 cm x 1.1 mm id) as the flow cell allows monitoring of the injected plug. A simple manifold coupled with a diode array spectrophotometer allows the determination of these parameters with a frequency of at least 90 h-1. Depending of the method adopted for the determination of polyphenols, Folin-Ciocalteu or I280, either a manifold different from that used for determining dissolved solids or the same, respectively, is required. The methods have been successfully applied to different wines and were substantiated well with official methods.     

Sampling and analysis of rain: methods and results of the Venice regional network

Summary Air quality and in particular acid rain composition has gained a great importance in the recent years all over the world. A vast research program has been undertaken also in the Venice Region. A network of 8 sampling stations, remote from motor traffic and industrial sources of air pollutants, was realized in 1988 according to the EMEP statements. It gives meteorological and physical data on the air quality and produces the wet-only samples of meteorological precipitations, of which the chemical composition is determined in laboratory. An automatic analyzer based on colorimetric methods is used for ammonium, sulfate, nitrate, phosphate and chloride determination and an Atomic Absorption spectrometer for Ca, Mg, K and Na analysis. The methods used are based on those recommended by U.S. Standard Methods for water samples. From all of them the method for sulfate determination needed the most serious modifications, due to the interferences of cations. This paper describes the analytical methods used and their detection limits. Data on the rain quality of the region, in the period February–June 1989 for the first 6 stations installed are reported together with their statistical elaborations. The relationships between single ions and the total amount of ions allow to interpret the rain water composition and to check the validity of the analytical methods. The average rain composition approximates a H₂SO₄/HNO₃ mixture with a volume-weighted average of pH of 5.42 and SO ₄ ^2– /NO ₃ ^– molar ratio of 1.10.