Micellar electrokinetic chromatographic separation and quantitative analysis of thorium, uranium, gold, and mercury from environmental ore samples

A rapid and reliable analytical procedure has been developed for the separation and analysis of dioxouranium, thorium, gold, and mercury by micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) using bis(acetylacetone)ethylenediamine (H2AA2en) as complexing reagent. Under the optimized conditions (64 mM borate buffer containing 12.25 mM SDS and 13% acetonitrile, pH 8.0, 25 kV, 311 nm as detection wavelength) the ions were separated within 5.0 min. Linear dynamic ranges were 1–5, 8–42, 10–50, and 2–40 μg mL -1, respectively, for gold, mercury, thorium, and uranium and the respective detection limits were 0.66, 3.33, 1.6, and 3.3 μg mL -1. The applicability of method has been evaluated by application to uranium and thorium from ore samples.