Flow injection method for the rapid determination of Chemical Oxygen Demand based on microwave digestion and chromium speciation in Flame Atomic Absorption Spectrometry

The present paper describes a new flow injection method for the determination of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD). This method consists of a first digestion step, where the sample is heated by microwave radiation, a second one where an anionic exchange resin retains the Cr(VI) that has not been reduced by the organic matter of the sample and a third one where Cr(VI), after being eluted, is determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. The microwave power applied, the sulphuric acid concentration, the liquid flow in the digestion step and the sample volume were the variables studied. The recovery and precision obtained with this method are similar to those obtained using a standard semi-micro method, whereas the throughput is much higher (up to 50 determinations per hour). As regards sensitivity, by changing the sample loop volume and the concentration of dichromate, one can analyze samples with Chemical Oxygen Demand values between 25 and 5000 mg/l. The limit-of detection is about 7 mg/l COD. An interesting feature of the new method, which is not shared by most other flow injection methods of Chemical Oxygen Demand determination, is that there is no matrix effect in the determination step.