On-line preconcentration/separation of inorganic arsenic and antimony by poly (aryl ether ketone) containing pendant carboxyl groups prior to microwave plasma atomic spectrometry determinations

A flow injection-column adsorption preconcentration-microwave plasma atomic emission spectrophotometric (FI-column-MP-AES) method is developed for on-line determining trace levels of inorganic arsenic and antimony released from packaging glass containers. The developed methodology involves a micro-column packed with poly (aryl ether ketone) containing pendant carboxyl groups (PEK-L) for adsorption preconcentration procedure before the determination by MP-AES. The main parameters affecting the preconcentration/separation are investigated in details. Under the optimized conditions, the detection limit of the proposed technique is 0.27μgL^-1 for As and 0.38μgL^-1 for Sb. Precisions, evaluated as repeatability of results (relative standard deviation with n=7), are 2.8 and 1.8% respectively for As and Sb. The proposed method has been applied to different reference materials and glass bottle packaging samples with satisfactory results.