Sequential Speciation Analysis of Heavy Metals in Drinking Water Pipe Scales by Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

An electrochemical mass spectrometry technique was developed based on a homemade analytical device for sequential analysis of the heavy metals with various speciations in the scales. Four speciations(e.g., water-soluble speciation, organic speciation, indissoluble speciation and elemental speciation) of heavy metals are sequentially extracted by H₂O, CH₃OH, EDTA-2Na and electrolysis for online electrospray ionization mass spectrometry(ESI-MS) detection. The method takes significant advantages, such as requiring no tedious offline sample pretreatment, high speed of analysis(20 min), high throughput (multi-metals), good sensitivity(0.5 µg/L) and rich chemical information(four speciations). As a result, the rapid comprehensive characterization of four speciations of Pb, Ni, Cu, Zn, Fe, Ba, Mn, Cr and Ca in water pipe scales has been qualitatively achieved. It demonstrated that the present method is a powerful tool for the effective assessment of potential hazards in drinking water, which provides a new analytical idea for evaluating water quality.

Keywords

Drinking water pipe scale / Heavy metal speciation analysis / Electrochemical-mass spectrometry / Sequential ionization

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