Determination of total available antimony in marine sediments by slurry formation–hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry. Applicability to the selective determination of antimony(III) and antimony(V)

Abstract

A method is described for the determination of total antimony, extractable into 4 mol dm^–3 HCl, and Sb^III, which combines a slurry procedure with hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry. The lack of a matrix effect allows the analytical results to be obtained with a simple aqueous working curve. The detection limit in solid samples is 13.3 and 8.35 ng g^–1 for Sb^III and total antimony, respectively. The proposed method for the determination of total antimony provides a better recovery than that obtained by digestion with a mixture of HNO₃–H₂SO₄–HClO₄ but worse than that obtained by digestion with HF.