Determination of Total Organic Fluorine (TOF) in Wastewater with High-Resolution Continuum Source Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (HR-CS MAS)Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in the Environment (Session 3)
Oral Presentation
Prepared by S. Sun
Analytik Jena US LLC, 100 Cummings Center, suite 234-N, Beverly, MA, 07001, United States
Contact Information: [email protected]; 781-799-4233
ABSTRACT
A wide range of fluorinated organic materials with highly desirable properties has been created in the past decades and their amount is constantly growing. Their chemical resistance and physical properties make them the ideal materials for many everyday products and applications, from pharmaceuticals through specialty chemicals to polymers. However, the downside of the accelerating production of fluorinated organic substances is their increased occurrence in the environment.
Besides the substances, other lesser-known toxic fluorine species can occur due to decomposition or microbial degradation. The determination of each single compound is time-consuming and cost intensive. Therefore, a sensitive screening method of fluorinated organic compounds as sum parameter enables a fast monitoring of the environmental pollution. The presented method can quantitatively determine TOF as sum parameter in wastewater. TOF is evaluated by the molecular absorption of gallium monofluoride (GaF) using Graphite Furnace HR-CS MAS. The boiling points of different Florine species play an important role of TOF analysis. Furnace program optimization and calibration strategy are fully discussed for achieving the species-unspecific response of different fluorinated organic compounds. The limit of detection was 4 µg/L of F. The recovery rate of a synthetic waste sample which containing 24 fluorinated organic compounds was 99.69%.
