Characterization of soils around a former chemical plant in Braila, SE Romania, using high performance atomic techniques (EDXRF, AAS, ICP-MS)

Abstract

This paper presents the problem of soil pollution in the vicinity of a former chemical plant, given that production activity was stopped for more than thirty years ago. The old chemical plant was located in the southern part of Braila town, SE Romania, just a few kilometers from the left bank of the Danube River. Prior to 1990, there was a significant production of industrial chemical goods, such as sulfuric acid, carbon dioxide for synthetic fibers, chlorine gas and hydrochloric acid obtained by electrolysis processes with mercury electrodes and heavy metal catalysts (Cd, Ni, Zn), sodium sulfide and sulphate, etc. For the good development of the experimental program, a number of 10 soil samples were collected from the north, northwest, west, southwest and south of the former chemical plant. The multi-element analysis method used to determine the trace elements in the soil samples was energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF), using a Genius XRF portable spectrometer manufactured by Skyray Instruments Inc., equipped with a large surface Si with a Be window and a 40 kV/100 µA miniature X-ray tube excitation source with Ag target. The spectrometric system has an energy resolution up to 139 eV, and the detection limits of the order of ppm. A total of 21 chemical elements were identified in the target soil samples, such as: K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Hg, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Mo, Sn, Sb, Pb. The compositional analyses of contaminated industrial soils were completed by using the AAS and ICP-MS high performance and selectivity techniques.

Multi-Elemental Characterization of Soils in the Vicinity of Siderurgical Industry: Levels, Depth Migration and Toxic Risk

“…For the application of XRF spectrometric analysis with energy dispersion (EDXRF), the prepared samples were put in specific capsules coated with a Myler foil. The encapsulated samples were irradiated for 120 s in SOIL mode using a portable Genius XRF spectrometer manufactured by Skyray Instruments Inc., equipped with a large area and detector with Be window and an excitation source of 40 kV/100 µA miniature X-ray tube with an Agtarget [14,18].…”

“…ICP-MS was applied for cadmium determination with the aid of an Agilent 7700X ICP-MS (Agilent, Santa Clara, CA, USA) spectrometer from the International Hellenic University (IHU), Kavala, Greece, a partner laboratory of the INPOLDE center within the framework of the MONITOX network [20], as described in a previous study [14]. The solid homogenized soil samples were weighed via the analytical balance (≈3 g), and 30 mL of strong HCl and HNO 3 mixture at a ratio of 1:3 (aqua regia) was added.…”

“…Industrial activities, such as metal smelting, steel production, mining, the chemical industry and coal-fired power production, may cause soil quality degradation and serious pollution of the environment with toxic trace elements which could negatively impact human health due to their accumulation, persistence and transfer in the compartments of the food chain [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. The elemental analysis at trace level is an important analytical task in various laboratories and high precision techniques, such as Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) [6][7][8][9][10], X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) [4,8,10,11] and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) [2,8,[12][13][14], have shown to be powerful tools for multi-elemental analysis of a variety of environmental matrices, including soil and rock material, as well as for the assessment of mineralogical and geochemical features and spatio-temporal contamination trends of a certain region. material, as well as for the assessment of mineralogical and geochemical features and spatio-temporal contamination trends of a certain region.…”

“…The work was carried out as a continuation and extension of pollution and risk assessment in previous studies limited to soil contamination with heavy metals [6,11,15] and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) [16] in the Galati industrial area and SE Romania in the period 2005-2009, and in connection with other international projects focused on the determination of toxic compounds and assessment of ecological and human health risk in the Black Sea Basin [3,14,19,20].…”

Multi-elemental Characterization of Soils in the Vicinity of Siderurgical Industry: Levels, Depth Migration and Toxic Risk

“…Industrial activities, such as metal smelting, steel production, mining, chemical industry and coal-fired power production, may cause soil quality degradation and serious pollution of environment with toxic trace elements which could negatively impact human health due to their accumulation, persistence and transfer in the compartments of the food chain [1][2][3][4][5]. The elemental analysis at trace level is an important analytical task in various laboratories and high precision techniques such as Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) [4][5][6][7][8][9][10], X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) [9][10][11][12][13][14] and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) [9,[12][13][14][15] have shown to be powerful tools for multielemental analysis of a variety of environmental matrices, including soil and rock material, as 2 well as for the assessment of mineralogical and geochemical features and spatio-temporal contamination trends of a certain region.…”