Quantification of Carbon Nanotubes in Environmental Matrices: Current Capabilities, Case Studies, and Future Prospects.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have numerous exciting potential applications and some that have reached commercialization. As such, quantitative measurements of CNTs in key environmental matrices (water, soil, sediment, and biological tissues) are needed to address concerns about their potential environmental and human health risks and to inform application development. However, standard methods for CNT quantification are not yet available.

Slow biotransformation of carbon nanotubes by horseradish peroxidase.

Due to steady increase in use and mass production carbon nanotubes (CNTs) will inevitably end up in the environment. Because of their chemical nature CNTs are expected to be recalcitrant and biotransform only at very slow rates. Degradation of CNTs within days has recently been reported, but excluding one study, conclusions relied solely on qualitative results.

Testing the resistance of fullerenes to chemothermal oxidation used to isolate soots from environmental samples.

We tested the resistance of five different fullerenes (C(60), C(70), C(76/78) mix, and C(84)) to chemothermal oxidation at 375 °C (CTO-375), a method that has been used and tested for quantifying black carbon (BC) and CNTs in soils and sediments. C(60) survived CTO-375 the most (50%), while C(70) was the fullerene with the lowest survival rate (<1%). Standard additions of C(60) to soil and sediment reference materials yielded recoveries between 18 and 36%.

Inferring black carbon concentrations in particulate organic matter by observing pyrene fluorescence losses.

Black carbon (BC), the soot and char formed during incomplete combustion of fossil and biomass fuels, is ubiquitous, participates in diverse environmental processes, and has adverse effects on human health. However, uncertainty persists regarding how accurately the present measurement methods quantify total BC or even defined subportions of the BC continuum. Hence, we sought to improve this situation by developing a new, low-sample manipulation methodology that does not require any oxidative or pyrolytic treatments but rather differentiates BC from other non-BC organic carbon (OC) using its sorbent properties.