The purpose of the project entitled White and green elemental methods using microplasma-based optical emission spectrometry for food and environment control (WHIGREEN) is the development and validation of ex-situ/on-site microanalytical methods with a high greenness and whiteness degree at TRL4 level for quality control of food and the environment by determining elements such as Hg, Cd, Pb, As, Se, Cu, and Zn. The methods will be implemented on a fully miniaturized optical emission microspectrometer with a capacitively coupled microplasma combined with electrothermal vaporization (SSETV-µCCP-OES) as an experimental demonstrator at TRL3 level. Improvement of analytical performance will be accomplished by coupling it with the combustion-assisted digestion with and without micro-solid phase extraction (μ-SPE) using C18 silica cartridges or functionalized silica adsorbents for monoelement and multielement analyses.
Specific objectives:
Optimization of the sample digestion method by oxygen flask combustion;
Testing and optimization of monoelemental/multielemental ex-situ preconcentration and on-site implementation from surface waters using C18-silica gel-based µ-SPE cartridges and/or functionalized silica sorbents;
Optimization of the power supply–miniaturized electrothermal vaporizer–microplasma tandem through rigorous temperature control for the introduction of liquid micro-samples into µCCP;
Improvement of analytical figures of merit (detection limit, non-spectral matrix effects) for the monoelemental and multielemental SSETV-µCCP-OES methods for food and environmental samples after ex-situ/in-situ µ-SPE preconcentration;
Validation of monoelemental and multielemental SSETV-µCCP-OES methods for food and environmental samples with or without ex-situ/in-situ µ-SPE through comparison with ICP-OES and GFAAS.;
Demonstration of the utility and applicability of the monoelemental and multielemental SSETV-µCCP-OES methods with and without ex-situ/on-site µ-SPE at TRL4 level through application to real food and environmental samples;
Greenness and whitenness degree evaluation of the ex-situ/on-site (µ-SPE)-SSETV-µCCP-OES methods using the AGREEprep and RGB-12 metrics.
