Computerized data treatment for an HPLC‐GFAAS system for the identification and quantification of trace element compounds

Abstract

Liquid chromatographs, coupled with graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometers, have been widely used for the identification and quantification of trace element compounds. The quantification of the discontinuous signals from the spectrometer defining a chromatographic band is very much a matter of judgement and therefore prone to error. This paper describes a system which links a high-performance liquid chromatograph via a ‘Brinckman’ flowthrough cup to a Hitachi Zeeman graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometer equipped with an autosampler. The introduction of aliquots from the column effluent and the analysis sequence is computer-controlled through a home-built interface. The signals from the spectrometer are passed through an analoguedigital converter and processed by selectable algorithms. The software offers a variety of options for processing the chromatographic data, such as data smoothing, Gaussian or spline interpolation, and trapezium or Simpson integration. This system was used to separate and determine selenite and selenate in aqueous solution with absolute detection limits (3 σ) of 23 ng Se for selenite and 16 ng Se for selenate. This system can be adapted to other spectrometers, provided that the required connections to the electronics can be made.

Chlorella sp. and Arsenic Compounds: An Attempt to Prepare an Algal Reference Material for Arsenic Compounds

“…The data were acquired with the time-resolved software TR Vision 1.a provided by VG Elemental. The chromatograms were exported and integration was performed with software 18 written in-house.…”

Uptake and transformation of arsenosugars in the shrimp Crangon crangon

“…Chromatograms were converted and integrated with software written in-house. 19 Arsenic compounds in the samples were quantified against standard solutions of arsenobetaine or arsenocholine chromatographed under identical conditions; the detector response following HPLC was the same for these two compounds. For complete HPLC recovery of the extracted arsenic, the sum of individual compounds should match the total arsenic in the extract.…”

Identification of arsenic species in sheep‐wool extracts by different chromatographic methods

“…Peak areas were used for quantification using the WINFASS program. 9 Since the response of ICP-MS to different arsenic species is identical, only DMA(V) was used for quantification. The columns were a Sulpelco LC-SCX (250 mm × 4.6 mm) for cation exchange, a Hamilton PRP X100 (100 × 4.1 mm) for anion exchange and an Asahipak GS220 (300 × 7.6 mm) as a size exclusion chromatography (SEC) column for small molecules.…”