Determination of Rare earth elements in environmental samples by solid phase extraction ICP OES

A simple sample pre-treatment method for rare earth elements enrichment from environmental water samples prior to optical emission spectrometry determination with inductively coupled plasma (ICP OES) is proposed based on solid phase extraction with octadecyl silica gel modified with 1,2,5,8-tetrahydroxyanthraquinone. Optimal experimental conditions including pH of sample solution, sample volume, type, concentration and volume of eluent were investigated and established. Rare earth elements ions were quantitatively adsorbed from aqueous solution onto octadecyl silica gel modified with Quinalizarin at pH 7.0. The adsorbed ions were eluted with 1.0 mL of 2 M HNO3 and simultaneously determined by ICP OES. Under obtained optimum conditions the calibration curves were linear with the coefficient of variation better than 0.99. The limit of detection of the method for the studied elements was in the range of 0.0004-0.01 ng/mL. The proposed method has a pre-concentration factor of 320-450 in water samples, which results in high sensitivity detection of trace ions. The developed method gave recoveries better than 80% and RSDs less than 15%.