Issue 12, 2024

Remediate and sense: alginate beads empowered by portable electrochemical strips for copper ion removal and detection at environmental sites

Abstract

The contamination of environmental sites due to the presence of persistent species represents an important issue to be tackled. In particular, the presence of high levels of metals in soil and surface water is more frequent. One of the metals that sometimes exceeds the permissible limit set by regulatory authorities is copper. For instance, copper-based fungicides are widely used in viticulture. However, copper ions remain in soil and can enter the food chain, posing threats to human health and environmental safety. Although the rapid detection of copper ions using portable sensors is effective in enhancing early warning, it sometimes solves only half of the problem as remediation is not considered. In this paper, we present a novel integrated/portable approach that merges the remediation and sensing of metals by proposing a remediate-and-sense concept. In order to realize this concept, alginate beads were coupled with printed electrochemical strips for on-site copper detection. Within the same architecture, alginate beads were used to remove copper ions from the soil, and printed electrochemical strips were used to evaluate the efficacy of remediation at the point of need. The concept was applied towards soil containing copper ions at the parts per billion level; with few alginate beads and in the absence of additional species, copper ions were quantitatively removed from the matrix; and 3D printing allowed us to combine the printed strips and spheres within a unique tool. The architecture was optimized and the results were compared to inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) measurements with a recovery percentage of 90%–110%. It should be noted that this novel portable approach may be applied to other pollutants, opening new possibilities for integrated remediation and sensing.

Graphical abstract: Remediate and sense: alginate beads empowered by portable electrochemical strips for copper ion removal and detection at environmental sites

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
30 3 2024
Accepted
01 5 2024
First published
01 5 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Analyst, 2024,149, 3302-3308

Remediate and sense: alginate beads empowered by portable electrochemical strips for copper ion removal and detection at environmental sites

A. Raucci, M. Metitiero, C. Cuzzi, P. M. Kalligosfyri, M. Messina, M. Spinelli, A. Amoresano, S. L. Woo, I. Cacciotti and S. Cinti, Analyst, 2024, 149, 3302 DOI: 10.1039/D4AN00494A

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