Characterization of humic-like substances in airborne particulate matter by capillary electrophoresis

Abstract

SummaryA considerable fraction of the refractory organic carbon in airborne particulate matter is to be attributed to humic-like substances (HULIS). Such atmospheric HU-LIS isolated from different air dust samples by a microscale extraction procedure were characterized by capillary electrophoresis (CE). For fractionation of HULIS the working conditions of the CE system were optimized using a borate buffer (pH 8.2), polyacrylamide (PAA) coated, fused-silica capillary and polyethylene glycol as sieving modifier. Using CE under optimized conditions, HULIS produced electropherograms showing well resolved and reproducible signals.

Comparison of isolation and quantification methods to measure humic-like substances (HULIS) in atmospheric particles

“…3bef, the five aerosol samples have similar UVeVis spectra. The absorbance decrease with increasing wavelength, following a trend similar to those already described for atmospheric WSOC and HULIS samples in previous studies (Havers et al, 1998;Baduel et al, 2009;Lin et al, 2010). As presented in Fig.…”

“…Based on certain hydrophobicehydrophilic interactions between organic solutes and non-ionic adsorbing solids, the relatively highly hydrophobic macromolecular organic acids would be retained onto the adsorbents. For the SPE method, the adsorbents used usually include C-18 Samburova et al, 2007), HLB Krivácsy et al, 2008;Lin et al, 2010), XAD-8 (Duarte and Duarte, 2005;Duarte et al, 2007;Sullivan and Weber, 2006;Santos et al, 2009Santos et al, , 2010 and DEAE (Havers et al, 1998;Baduel et al, 2009). These four isolation adsorbents together cover approximately 80% of the current work about HULIS quantification and have been applied to isolation of a great variety of atmospheric samples.…”

Characterization of macromolecular organic matter in atmospheric dust from Guangzhou, China

“…As yet, these isolation and characterization approaches have not been applied to dust, although hulis and BC in aerosol have been widely studied in the past (Havers et al, 1998;Krivácsy et al, 2000;Dinar et al, 2006;Taraniuk et al, 2007;Kirchstetter et al, 2008;Dutkiewicz et al, 2009;Sýkorová et al, 2009). In the present study, we isolated HAs, kerogen and black carbon (KB) and BC from dust collected in Guangzhou, China, and then characterized the chemical composition of the fractionated macromolecule organic matter using elementary analysis (EA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), organic petrographic examination (OPE), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), solid state 13 C cross-polarization and magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( 13 C-CP/MAS NMR) and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).…”

Characterisation of solvent extractable organic constituents in atmospheric particulate matter: an overview

“…Different extraction procedures and detection methods were presented in the literature. Spectroscopic methods such as ultraviolet, fluorescence, or infrared spectroscopy were most often used to characterise this organic mass fraction, but electrospray ionisation mass spectroscopy and laser desorption/ionisation mass spectrometry (LDI/MS) were used as well (Havers et al 1998, Kalberer et al 2004, 2006, Kiss et al 2003, Krivácsy et al 2001, Samburova et al 2005, Varga et al 2001, Zappoli et al 1999. Because of the large number of compounds detected with mass spectrometric methods (Kiss et al 2003, Samburova et al 2005, and because the chemical properties of these compounds are mostly unknown, it is difficult to determine their concentration or their molecular weight distribution (Kalberer et al 2006).…”