A Novel Fast Ion Chromatographic Method for the Analysis of Fluoride in Antarctic Snow and Ice

Abstract

Ice cores are widely used to reconstruct past changes of the climate system. For instance, the ice core record of numerous water-soluble and insoluble chemical species that are trapped in snow and ice offer the possibility to investigate past changes of various key compounds present in the atmosphere (i.e., aerosol, reactive gases). We developed a new method for the quantitative determination of fluoride in ice cores at sub-μg L(-1) levels by coupling a flow injection analysis technique with a fast ion chromatography separation based on the "heart cut" column switching technology. Sensitivity, linear range (up to 60 μg L(-1)), reproducibility, and detection limit (0.02 μg L(-1)) were evaluated for the new method. This method was successfully applied to the analysis of fluoride at trace levels in more than 450 recent snow samples collected during the 1998-1999 International Trans-Antarctica Scientific Expedition traverse in East Antarctica at sites located between 170 and 850 km from the coastline.

Recent advances in flow injection analysis

“…In another recently published paper, the advantages of hyphenation of an FIA system with ion-chromatography for fast and very sensitive determination of fluoride in Antarctic snow and ice was discussed, based on a so called "heart-cut" column switching technique. 427 In the flow injection part of the setup, the preconcentration and pre-separation of anions is carried out, and then the solution zone containing non-resolved fluoride and acetate is loaded into the analytical column for a final separation, and the detection of fluoride was achieved with LOD of 20 ng L −1 , for a sample volume of 1.3 mL.…”

Novel DGT method with tri-metal oxide adsorbent for in situ spatiotemporal flux measurement of fluoride in waters and sediments

“…Numerous methodologies have been applied to the measurement of F -in waters 64 and sediments, including F -selective electrodes (Perdikaki et al, 2002), ion 65 chromatography (Hoop et al, 1996;Severi et al, 2014), fluorescence capillary 66 electrophoresis (Hoop et al, 1996), 19 F nuclear magnetic resonance spectra (Zeng and 67 Stebbins, 2000) and colorimetric determination (Zhu et al, 2005). Although some of 68 these methods are sensitive, they have rarely been used in field analysis owing to their 69 non-portability (Sun et al, 2014 (Perdikaki et al, 2002), and above all a low accuracy,…”

Fast Liquid Chromatography Coupled with Tandem Mass Spectrometry for the Analysis of Vanillic and Syringic Acids in Ice Cores

“…Until now, CFA has mainly been coupled with analytical techniques that allow continuous sample analysis, such as flow injection analysis, − or inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP–MS). ,, Traversi and her colleagues have developed a way of coupling fast ion chromatography (FIC) to a melter system for quantitative continuous determination of major ionic chemical impurities in ice. This has been improved over the last decade by improving the temporal resolution of the analyses and the chromatographic performance. − …”