Solid extractants chemical characterization

After several decades of research, fundamental aspects of the chemical composition and structure of marine organic matter remain elusive. Advances in the chemical characterization of marine organic matter are, in large part, dependent on the development of quantitative methods for its concentration and isolation from seawater. Each of the major methods currently used for the isolation of marine DOM recovers around one-third of the DOM in seawater (solid-phase extractions, using XAD resins or C18 adsorbents, and ultrafiltration). A coupled reverse osmosis-electrodi-alysis method has recently been used to recover an average of 75% 12% of marine DOM from 16 seawater samples however, the method has emerged too recently to have been well tested at this time. 

Chemical characterization of DOM has been studied extensively, providing a wealth of information regarding its chemical properties [17,20,25,60,64-89]. CDOM is usually characterized as aquatic humic substances, such as humic and fulvic acids, owing to the presence of multiple double bonds in aromatic, aldehyde, and ketone groups. Isolation of humic substances involves their separation by adsorption on macroporous resins (e.g., XAD-8 or XAD-4) and elution at various pH [90]. Humic acids are soluble above a pH of 2, while fulvic acids are soluble at any pH. Solid phase extraction (SPE) onto Cig resin is also employed to isolate CDOM [44,73]. Amador and coworkers have shown that... 

Obviously, this field has been developing rapidly in the last few decades. Much early work suffered because of insufficient techniques or isolation difficulties in chemical characterization of the extractive components. Now this is no longer the case modern advances in techniques, instrumentation, and analytical methods have resulted in some excellent and solid research in this field. A great deal of research remains to be done and this is discussed in the section below. 

In catalysis, infrared (IR) spectroscopy is commonly used to characterize specific adsorbates. Because of the localized nature and particular chemical specificity of molecular vibrations, IR spectra are quite rich in information, and can be used to extract or infer both structural and compositional information on the adsorbate itself as well as on its coordination on the surface of the catalyst. In some instances, IR spectroscopy is also suitable for the direct characterization of solids, especially if they can be probed in the far-IR region (10-200 cm ) [74-76],... 

Conventional radiochemical methods for the determination of long-lived radionuclides at low concentration levels require a careful chemical separation of the analyte, e.g., by liquid-liquid, solid phase extraction or ion chromatography. The chemical separation of the interferents from the long-lived radionuclide at the ultratrace level and its enrichment in order to achieve low detection limits is often very time consuming. Inorganic mass spectrometry is especially advantageous in comparison to radioanalytical techniques for the characterization of radionuclides with long half-lives (> 104 a) at the ultratrace level and very low radioactive environmental or waste samples. 

C18 solid-phase extraction is used to fractionate polyphenolics for their identification and characterization. This technique can eliminate interfering chemicals from crude extracts and produce desirable results for HPLC or other analytical procedures. To obtain a sufficient volume for all analyses, several separations by solid-phase extraction may be performed. The individual fractions need to be combined and dissolved in solvents appropriate for HPLC analysis. In Basic Protocol 2, the application of a current of nitrogen gas for the removal of water from the C18 cartridge is an important step in the selective fractionation of polyphenolics into non-anthocy-anin and anthocyanin fractions. After the collection of non-anthocyanin polyphenolics, no additional work is necessary to elute anthocyanins bound to the C18 solid phase if anthocyanins are not to be determined. 

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