Determination of Rhenium in Seawater from the Jiulong River Estuary and Taiwan Strait, China by Automated Flow Injection Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry

A novel and automated flow injection (FI) system using a commercially available anion-exchange resin was developed for the online determination of rhenium in seawater by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The flow rate, reagent concentration, and sample volume were optimized. The rhenium concentration was determined using the integrated peak area through interpolation of standard addition calibration curves. The relative standard deviation was less than 2.45% (n=5), the recoveries were from 94.59 to 104.11%, and the linear dynamic range of the method was up to 998ngkg(-1). There was a good agreement between the rhenium concentrations in a standard measured in this work with results from previous studies. The limit of detection was 0.11ngkg(-1) for a sample volume of 7.5mL and one cycle required 8.33min. The developed FI-ICP-MS method was used to determine rhenium in seawater from the Jiulong River Estuary and Taiwan Strait.