Fractionation and determination of aluminum and iron in soil water samples using SPE cartridges and ICP-AES

The use of commercially available solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges for the fractionation of Al and Fe in soil water is described. The quantitative determination was done by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Different types of SPE cartridges, based on cation exchange, anion exchange, and chelation were studied. To avoid pH changes, the SPE cartridge should be conditioned with a buffer that has a pH close to that of the sample. Both strong cation exchange (SCX) and chelation were found to work well, whereas low recovery was observed for Al when anion exchange was used. For Fe, the sum of the anionic and cationic fractions that passed through the cartridges was nearly 100%. The results obtained for Al for 23 soil water samples using a SPE/SCX cartridge and ICP-AES were compared with equilibrium calculations using the program ALCHEMI and also with a fractionation method that was based on separation on a manually prepared SCX column and detection by molecular spectrophotometry, after complexation with pyrocatechol violet (SCX-PCV method). The SPE/SCX-ICP-AES results for the labile Al fraction (Al bound to the SCX cartridge) showed an acceptable correlation with the results obtained by the equilibrium calculations, except for the samples with the highest DOC concentrations, whereas the values obtained for labile Al by the more traditional SCX-PCV method were much lower. We recommend that the SPE/SCX-ICP-AES procedure described in this work be selected for the fractionation of Al and Fe species in soil and freshwater samples.