engleski

Application of HR-ICP-MS for monitoring heavy metals after bioreactor treatment

Environmental pollution caused by heavy metals presents a serious problem due to their toxicity and insusceptibility in the environment. Therefore different bioreactor treatment systems are applied in order to reduce the concentration of metals to an acceptable level before their discharge into the environment. The goal of bioreactor treatment is to avoid threats to public health and/or affecting the quality of potable water. In our previous research we have used a horizontal rotating tubular bioreactor (HRTB) for removal of a few selected metals in a pilot study [1]. We applied UV-VIS and high resolution inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HR-ICP-MS) for monitoring of metals in the biomass and in the wastewater. In this work we report the advantages and disadvantages of HR-ICP-MS for monitoring of heavy metals in the samples before and after the bioreactor treatment. Our results have proved that, although the HR-ICP-MS offers significant advantages over other analytical techniques (like low detection limits, good precision and repeatability), it also suffers from some drawbacks: high costs due to the requirements for the ultra clean laboratory and supra pure chemicals, as well as much lower tolerance to high matrix loading which are usually present in industrial wastewaters. In addition, high dilutions are required in order to reach the working range of certain elements, a step which might cause contaminations or losses of analytes.

ICP-MS ; heavy metals ; bioreactor

nije evidentirano