Investigation into sorption processes in the anodic stripping voltammetric speciation of Cu in natural waters Original Research Article

In the anodic stripping voltammetric speciation of copper significant errors may be introduced as a result of sorption of Cu2+ onto active surfaces of the voltammetric cell assembly. A correction method was developed based on monitoring of the total copper concentration in solution using a 64Cu-radiotracer; additionally this allowed us to study sorption phenomena in the voltammetric cell assembly. For copper speciation in a fresh water sorption-corrected complexing capacity data (total natural ligand concentration and conditional stability constant of formed complex) showed considerable discrepancies with uncorrected data. From the same sorption data it could be deducted that this was accountable to the presence of two active surface sites in the voltammetric cell assembly.