Preconcentration of mercury(II) from waters using glycidyl methacrylate-methyl methacrylate-divinyl benzene terpolymer with diethylenetriamine tetra acetic acid functions prior to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric determination

A novel sorbent, glycidyl methacrylate (GMA)-methyl methacrylate (MMA)-divinylbenzene (DVB) terpolymer functionalized with diethylenetriamine tetraacetic acid (DTTA), has been used for the sorption and preconcentration of Hg²⁺ from waters prior to its determination by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Various parameters such as solution pH, contact time, and sorbent amount were studied. Optimum sorption conditions were determined as pH of 7, contact time of 60 minutes, and sorbent amount/solution volume ratio of 1.5 mg mL⁻¹. Batch-type equilibration studies have shown that the novel sorbent can be employed at a pH range resulting in quantitative sorption (>95%) at pH 4.0–8.0. For the quantitative elution of Hg²⁺ from the sorbent, 1.0 M HCl was used. Langmuir isotherm model was found to characterize the uptake of Hg²⁺ by the novel sorbent. In addition, it was observed that the sorbent effectively removed Hg²⁺ ion even in the presence of several competitor ions (Pb²⁺, Cu²⁺, Zn²⁺, Fe³⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, Ba²⁺, Ni²⁺, Al³⁺, Co²⁺, Mn²⁺, and Cd²⁺) with ≥99% removal. The validity of the method was verified both through the analysis of certified reference materials (BCR 422 and NIST 1547) and by spike recovery experiments. A recovery of ≥93% was obtained for ultrapure, tap and bottled drinking water samples even with a preconcentration factor of 100. Moreover, a good agreement was found for the results obtained with the proposed method and the certified values.