Analysis of Marine Sediments and Sewage Sludge by PlasmaQuant MS Application Note · PlasmaQuant MS

Introduction

To evaluate the potential ecotoxicology of soils, sediments an particularly sewage sludge constant monitoring for heavy metal content is required.The recycling of sewage sludge is closely linked to environmental regulations, so that a precise characterization is necessary. Industrial wastewater and waste are also subject to strict regulations and must be regularly checked and characterized. The determination of harmful and toxic elements in solid materials requires a digestion procedure prior to the analysis. Depending on sample type, matrix composition and the analyte elements of interest, the degree of difficulty of sample preparation varies. In this work, sample preparation was performed by microwave assisted acidic mineralization.

In total, 26 elements from major (percent), minor (ppm) and trace (ppb) levels were determined in three certified reference materials CRMs (two sewage sludge: BCR-144R and CRM055, one marine sediment: PACS-2). The obtained results clearly show excellent agreement with the certified values. Spike recoveries in the range of 90 to 104%, accuracy with Z-score uncertainty values ranging within -2.0 and +2.0 as well as precicion of less than 5% relative standard deviation (RSD) prove the method robustness and applicability to environmental samples.