Sequential injection analysis system with DGA resin for sample pretreatment in ICP-MS determination of 239Pu in nuclear industry samples

The monitoring of the presence of plutonium isotopes is a very important issue in both nuclear energy industry and environmental protection for human health risk assessment. The developed method for the determination of Pu-239 isotope with ICP-QMS detection is based on the use of sequential injection analysis (SIA) system for the pretreatment of samples to be analyzed with the use of a commercial sorbent called diglycolamide (DGA-b) for the analyte preconcentration and separation from U-238, which is the source of the most significant isobaric interference (UH+)-U-238-H-1. Optimizing the size of the sorbent bed and the conditions of analyte sorption and elution of plutonium and uranium provides the analytical procedure for 239 Pu determination, where at total analysis time of 45 min (at flow rate 10 mL min(-1)) the evaluated method detection limit (MDL) for 100 mL sample volume was 88 mBq L-1. This is satisfactory detectability for applications in both technological and environmental samples.