Direct determination of arsenic in soil samples by fast pyrolysis–chemical vapor generation using sodium formate as a reductant followed by nondispersive atomic fluorescence spectrometry

This new study shows for the first time that sodium formate can react with trace arsenic to form volatile species via fast pyrolysis – chemical vapor generation. We found that the presence of thiourea greatly enhanced the generation efficiency and eliminated the interference of copper. We studied the reaction temperature, the volume of sodium formate, the reaction acidity, and the carried argon rate using nondispersive atomic fluorescence spectrometry. Under optimal conditions of T = 500 °C, the volumes of 30% sodium formate and 10% thiourea were 0.2 ml and 0.05 ml, respectively. The carrier argon rate was 300 ml min − 1 and the detection limit and precision of arsenic were 0.39 ng and 3.25%, respectively. The amount of arsenic in soil can be directly determined by adding trace amount of hydrochloric acid as a decomposition reagent without any sample pretreatment. The method was successfully applied to determine trace amount of arsenic in two soil-certified reference materials (GBW07453 and GBW07450), and the results were found to be in agreement with certified reference values.