Platinum speciation with hyphenated techniques: high performance liquid chromatography and capillary electrophoresis on-line coupled to an inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer – application to aqueous extracts from a platinum treated soil

1. An on-line hyphenation of reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) is applied, using an ultrasonic nebuliser combined with a membrane desolvator as the interface. Thus, organic solvents (e.g. methanol, hexane) or gradients (e.g. methanol/water) as well as aqueous NaHCO₃/NaCl mixtures can be directly used without influence on the plasma. The high resolution power of HPLC enables the separation of Pt-species, whereas ICP-MS is taken for element specific detection with low detection limits. 2. Additionally, a powerful on-line coupling of capillary electrophoresis (CE) and ICP-MS 1, 2] was used for platinum speciation in parallel. With these two methods, independent from each other, first characterisation is achieved about the nature of Pt species formed by interaction with a soil. Aqueous extracts of a clay-like humic soil, treated with a Pt contaminated tunnel dust and Pt model compounds 3] were examined to elucidate transformation processes of Pt-species in a soil. Received: 19 February 1997 / Revised: 15 April 1997 / Accepted: 18 April 1997