Sample pretreatment using chitosan-based chelating resin for the determination of trace metals in seawater samples by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry.

A sample-pretreatment method using a chitosan-based chelating resin, ethylenediamine-N,N,N'-triacetate-type chitosan (EDTriA-type chitosan), was developed for the preconcentration of trace metals in seawater and separation of the seawater matrix prior to their determination by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The resin showed very good adsorption for transition metals and rare-earth elements without any interference from alkali and alkaline-earth metals in an acidic media. In the proposed method, an aliquot of a 50-mL sample at pH 4 was used. Metals adsorbed on the resin were eluted using 10 mL of 1 M nitric and measured by ICP-MS. The method was evaluated by the analysis of NASS-5 seawater reference materials for trace metals. Good agreement was obtained for most metals, which indicates that by the proposed pretreatment using the synthesized resin, seawater samples can be favorably measured by ICP-MS.