Solid phase extraction applied to natural waters: efficiency and selectivity

Organic matter strongly influences the behaviour of dissolved metals in natural waters. A complete understanding on the nature of these compounds, requires their isolation. The most recently used extraction procedure is reverse-phase liquid chromatography, or solid phase extraction (SPE), by which resins are supposed to retain hydrophobic dissolved material. However, no studies have been done coupling this method with sequential tangential ultrafiltration (STUF). For this purpose two types of ultrafiltered natural samples from the Amazonian River system were used. First, to determine if these two extractive methods are complementary, and second, to compare the efficiency of two SPE methods according to particle size, and amount.