Fast speciation of mercury in seawater by short-column high-performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to inductively coupled plasma spectrometry after on-line cation exchange column preconcentration.

A simple and fast method for trace speciation analysis of mercury (Hg(2+)), methylmercury (MeHg(+)) and ethylmercury (EtHg(+)) in seawater has been developed by short-column high-performance liquid chromatography hyphenated to inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS) after on-line cation-exchange column (CEC) preconcentration. The analytes were firstly adsorbed on the CEC without any extraneous reagent, and then were eluted rapidly (within seconds) and completely with a very low concentration of l-cysteine solution, which provides the conveniency for the on-line coupling of the preconcentration method and detection technique. To our best knowledge, it is for the first time to employ the CEC preconcentration technique to trap all of the three mercury species simultaneously at their positive charged status for the purpose of speciation analysis.

[Adsorption behavior of exogenous thorium on soil contaminated by rare earth industries].

The adsorption behavior of exogenous thorium on soil was studied to evaluate the contaminated risk on soil. The adsorption capacity, equilibrium time, distribution coefficient and desorption ability were investigated by the experiments of static adsorption. The strong adsorption ability of exogenous thorium on soil samples was observed by high adsorption ratio (> 92%) and low desorption ratio (< 5%) in equilibrium, and the biggest distribution coefficient was over 10(4).