Chitosan modified ordered mesoporous silica as micro-column packing materials for on-line flow injection-inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry determination of trace heavy metals in environmental water samples

A novel adsorbent of chitosan chemically modified ordered mesoporous silica was synthesized and employed as a solid phase extraction (SPE) material for flow injection (FI) micro-column preconcentration on-line coupled with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) determination of trace heavy metals V, Cu, Pb, Cd and Hg in environmental water samples. The factors affecting separation and preconcentration of target heavy metals such as pH, sample flow rate and volume, eluent concentration and volume, interfering ions were investigated. Under the optimized experimental conditions, an enrichment factor of 20 and sampling frequency of 10 h−1 were obtained. The detection limits of the method for V, Cu, Pb, Cd and Hg were 0.33, 0.30, 0.96, 0.05 and 0.93 ng mL−1, and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) were 2.8%, 6.7%, 1.8%, 4.0% and 5.3% (n = 7, C = 10 ng mL−1), respectively. The adsorption capacities of chitosan modified ordered mesoporous silica for V, Cu, Pb, Cd, and Hg were found to be 16.3, 21.7, 22.9, 12.2 and 13.5 mg g−1, respectively. In order to validate the developed method, a certified reference material of GSBZ50009-88 environmental water sample was analyzed and the determined values were in good agreement with the certified values. The proposed method has also been applied to the determination of trace heavy metals in natural water samples with satisfactory results.