I work in the area of phytoremediation of heavy metals. How can I make use of GCMS- that is recently installed in my lab- for heavy metal analysis in plant/water/soil samples ? Is it possible ?
In my opinion, it is better to use Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission
spectroscopy (ICP-AES), / inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) for the detection of heavy metals in these samples. You can acid-digest plant and soil samples before running on ICP
GC-MS requires the molecule to be sufficiently volatile to be separated and detected.
Most metal compounds (if not all) will not fulfill this prerequisite, so another analytical method is then to be used.
I do not think you need to use GCMS for heavy metal analysis as it is suited for specific tests or trace elements/metals in materials that were previously thought to have disintegrated beyond identification.
What you need to use is an Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission
spectroscopy (ICP-AES) or Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) which uses the inductively coupled plasma to produce excited atoms and ions that emit electromagnetic radiation at wavelengths characteristic of
a particular element. This is suited for quantitative and quality determination of elemental content metalloids in a given sample.
Thank you everyone for sharing your expertise. Currently we are using AAS for the analyses of metals in our lab and I know that any GC technique requires samples should be volatile/ made volatilized. However I wanted to make it confirm my knowledge about the technique is upto date.
GCMS to separate and identify volatile components. In my opinion spectroscopy Atomic absorption spectroscopy for heavy metals.
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2022/2284328/
Using GC-MS heavy metals analyses for zinc (Zn), copper (Cu), manganese (Mn), chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), and chromium (Cr) were performed in triplicates for both medicinal plants using the atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Analytical grade concentrted per chloric acid (HClO4) and nitric acid (HNO3) were used for the digestion.
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