Conversion of an invasive plant into a new solid phase for lead preconcentration for analytical purpose

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eti.2020.101336Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Transformation of an aquatic plant into a high-value biosorbent for analytical chemistry.

  • New green solid phase for preconcentration of Pb(II) for tea samples analyze by FAAS.

  • New preconcentration methodology according to the principles of Green Chemistry.

  • New preconcentration methodology cheaper and less contaminant.

Abstract

Eichornia crassipes is an atypical plant in the various regions of the Caribbean’s Central America e South American Countries. This plant causes severe problems in the aquatic environment of these places. Thus, it is necessary to remove this plant from the aquatic ecosystem causing immense environmental benefit. One alternative is transforming this plant into a solid low-cost phase for analytical methodologies and enabling cost reduction in the analysis of environmental pollutants. Toxic metal elements like lead have not function in the human body. It is crucial to determine lows concentrations of metals in water, foods, and beverages to assess daily consumption permissibility. Flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS), compared to more sensitive equipment, is low-cost, easy-to-operate equipment, above all high precision and specificity. Their lack of sensitivity can be overcome with a preconcentration methodology. This work aims to transform the leaves of Eichornia crassipes into a new green solid-phase and find the best extraction conditions for Pb (II) determination by solid phase extraction (SPE) online with FAAS. The leaves of the plant were collected, washed with water, dried at room temperature, oven, milled, and sifted. The solid-phase extraction parameters, such as pH, type of eluent, sample flow rate, amount of sorbent, and eluent flow rate, were optimized. An experimental factorial design 24 was applied with the sample flow, eluent flow, column mass, and volume of complexing agent. The two-dimensional central and rotating composite design was applied to the variables that obtained significance through experimental design. The elimination of a complexing agent allowed the methodology to become more compatible with the principles of green chemistry. The enrichment factor and the limit of detection were 48.5 and 2.35 μg L−1, respectively. The method was validated with SRM 1515 certified reference material. The SPE-FAAS online methodology with a minicolumn of Eichhornia crassipes is a simple, fast, economical, safe, and eco-friendly alternative for the determination of Pb(II).

Introduction

Eichhornia crassipes is an aquatic macrophyte, a bioindicator of pollution. The uncontrolled propagation of this plant in rivers brings negative impacts, such as the low concentration of dissolved oxygen in water, difficulty in fishing, death of fish, favoring the proliferation of animals that transmit diseases, among other disorders. E. crassipes become an environmental problem, so it is necessary to reduce the population of this plant in the aquatic ecosystem (Martins and Pitelli, 2005). This fiber has been studied to adsorb metals like Cd, Pb, Zn, Cu, and Cr (Mahamadi and Nharingo, 2010, Li et al., 2013). It has been showing promising results of adsorption capacity (Da Silva Correia et al., 2018, Neris et al., 2019a)

The advance of industrial production causes an increase in the concentration of metals in the air, water, and soil and makes it bioavailable in the leaves of plants used in tea (Jin et al., 2005). The human body needs several metals for perfect functioning, but some metals, such as lead, do not function in the body. Depending on the concentration of Pb in humans, it can cause neurological, mutagenic, carcinogenic, and teratogenic effects (Fawell et al., 2011). The World Health Organization establishes that the reference value for Pb in drinking water is 10 μg L−1 (Herschy, 2012). Analytical techniques for quantifying chemical elements, such as flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS), offers advantages that more elaborate equipment does not have, such as ease and low cost of operation, in addition to high sample yield, precision, and specificity (Hassanien, 2009). This technique has limitations regarding the quantification of metals in concentrations below the standard’s values. Given this problem, preconcentration methodologies are alternatives that allow the quantification of these elements in trace concentration (Sá et al., 2019). Different preconcentration methods are used to separate and pre-concentrate metals as coprecipitation (Soylak and Aydin, 2011, Moreira et al., 2020, Peng et al., 2012, Wu et al., 2007), liquid–liquid extraction (Korn et al., 2006, Lemos et al., 2019), dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (de Almeida et al., 2018, Mallah et al., 2008, Lemos et al., 2020), cloud point extraction (Mortada, 2020, Souza et al., 2020, Shokrollahi et al., 2008), solid phase extraction (Jalili et al., 2020b, Heidari and Ghiasvand, 2020, Narin et al., 2003), among others.

Solid phase extraction is useful for speciation and separation of water-soluble species. It is a simple, miniaturized, economical, robust, versatile, high-yield method that uses a few volumes of solvents, easy coupling in analytical techniques (Türker, 2012, Jalili et al., 2020a, Hussain et al., 2020). Online methodologies have advantages such as high analytical frequency, reduced consumption of reagents and samples, a minimal amount of waste, minimize the risk of contamination, and in the closed system reduce operator exposure to reagents Nunes and Lemos (2018).

The use of natural adsorbents in solid phase extraction has become favorable in the last twenty years because it adds advantages such as the use of renewable sources, low toxicity, effective extraction, easy applicability, high biodegradability, and mainly less aggressive with the environment (Godage and Gionfriddo, 2020). Bacteria like Anoxybacillus kestanboliensis (Ozdemir et al., 2020), Agrobacterium tumefacients (Baytak and Türker, 2005) of the genus Pseudomonas (Aksu, 2005), Bacillus, Streptomyces (Ozdemir et al., 2010, Ozdemir and Kilinc, 2012, Vijayaraghavan and Yun, 2008) plant material such as sugarcane bagasse (Dias et al., 2020), in addition to fungi and algae, they are materials used as biosorbents that are compatible with the concept of green chemistry (Okenicová et al., 2016). The use of these biological materials is a trend in developing technologies for the removal and quantification of toxic metals in the environment (Wang and Chen, 2009).

Based on this information, the objective of this work was to transform the leaves of E. crassipes into a solid low-cost phase for preconcentration of Pb (II) by FAAS and reduce an environmental problem caused by this plant.

Section snippets

Reagents and apparatus

For the development of the preconcentration methodology, a Perkin Elmer AAnalyst 200 flame atomic absorption spectrometer was used. Pb(II) stock solution at 1000 μg mL−1 (Merck, Darmstadt, Germany), diluted with ultra-pure water, was used. The elution solvent used was 0.1 mol L−1 hydrochloric acid (Merck, Darmstadt, Germany). One BT100LC four-channel peristaltic pump (Baoding, Chuangrui, Precision Pump Co., Hebei, China) was used to propel the solutions.

Solid phase preparation

Samples of E. crassipes leaves were

SPE procedure

The solid phase extraction methodology was applied in an online system that consists of two peristaltic pumps, a six-port manual valve, silicone tubes, and the minicolumn (3.0 cm long, and 0.5 cm in diameter) with the lignocellulosic adsorbent of Eichhornia crassipes (Fig. 2). The detector was a flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS — PerkinElmer AAnalyst 400 AA Spectrometer). A volume of 25 mL of a solution of Pb(II) 50 μg L−1 at pH 5.0 is passed through the preconcentration minicolumn.

Adsorbent and eluent selection

Neris et al. (2019a) states that for lead adsorption in E. crassipes, the removal percentage is not affected by chemical treatment. Therefore fibers washed with water resulted in greater efficiency for preconcentration compared to chemically modified fibers. The development of this adsorbent dispenses the use of toxic reagents or laborious procedures, which adds value according to the principles of green chemistry. The raw material constitutes an environmental problem; when developing the

Conclusion

The use of leaves of E. crassipes as an adsorbent in the preconcentration methodology in the solid phase provides environmental benefits such as removing a pollutant from rivers reuses material that would be garbage, reduce all consumable materials and develop an economic methodology. The solid phase prepared from E. crassipes in the preconcentration methodology in the solid phase proved to be a simple, fast, and low-cost alternative, without toxic reagents for the quantification of Pb(II). The

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Ohana Nadine de Almeida: Conception and design of study, Acquisition of data, Analysis and/or interpretation of data, Writing - original draft. Rebeca Moraes Menezes: Conception and design of study, Acquisition of data, Analysis and/or interpretation of data. Leane Santos Nunes: Conception and design of study, Acquisition of data. Valfredo Azevedo Lemos: Conception and design of study, Analysis and/or interpretation of data, Writing - review & editing. Francisco Heriberto Martinez Luzardo:

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Center for Research in Radiation Sciences and Technologies (CPqCTR), Brazil, the Postgraduate Program in Development and Environment (Prodema) of the State University of Santa Cruz, Bahia, Brazil, the State University of Southwest Bahia, Brazil, and the Foundation for Research Support of the State of Bahia (FAPESB), Brazil for the financial support. All authors approved the version of the manuscript to be published.

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