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Continuous flow analysis method for determination of soluble iron and aluminium in ice cores

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Abstract

Iron and aluminium are the two most abundant metals on the Earth's crust, but they display quite different biogeochemical properties. While iron is essential to many biological processes, aluminium has not been found to have any biological function at all. In environmental studies, iron has been studied in detail for its limiting role in the bioproductivity of high nutrient, low carbon oceanic zones, while aluminium is routinely used as a reference of crustal contributions to atmospheric deposition archives including peat bogs, lacustrine and marine sediments and ice sheets and glaciers. We report here the development of a flow injection analysis technique, which has been optimised for the simultaneous determination of soluble iron and aluminium in polar ice cores. Iron was determined by its catalytic role in the reduction of N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamene (DPD) to a semiquinonic form (DPDQ) and subsequent absorption spectroscopy at 514 nm. Aluminium was determined by spectroscopic analysis of an aluminium–lumogallion complex that exhibits fluorescence at 560 nm. These techniques have been applied to a section of Greenland ice dated to 1729–1733 ad and indicate that volcanism is a source of highly soluble aluminium and iron.

The micro volume flow cell used in the continuous flow detections of iron illuminated by a 525-nm LED light source.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anders Svensson, Henrik Clausen and Bo Vinther for helpful discussion and assistance with NorthGRIP SO 2−4 data and the sample chronology. This work is a contribution to the NGRIP ice core project, which is directed and organised by the Ice and Climate Research Group at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. It is being supported by funding agencies in Denmark (SNF), Belgium (FNRS-CFB), France (IFRTP and INSU/CNRS), Germany (AWI), Iceland (RannIs), Japan (MEXT), Sweden (SPRS), Switzerland (SNF) and the USA (NSF). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework programme (FP7/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 243908, ‘Past4Future: Climate change—Learning from the past climate’. This is Past4Future contribution no. XX.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Science, University of Siena, Via del Laterino 8, 53100, Siena, Italy

    A. Spolaor

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Informatics and Statistics (DAIS), University of Venice, Dorsoduro 2137, 30123, Venice, Italy

    A. Spolaor & C. Barbante

  3. Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute, Juliane Maries Vej 30, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    P. Vallelonga

  4. Institute for the Dynamics of Environmental Processes—CNR, University of Venice, Dorsoduro 2137, 30123, Venice, Italy

    J. Gabrieli, M. Roman & C. Barbante

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  1. A. Spolaor
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  2. P. Vallelonga
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  5. C. Barbante
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Correspondence to C. Barbante.

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Published in the special issue Analytical Science in Italy with guest editor Aldo Roda.

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Spolaor, A., Vallelonga, P., Gabrieli, J. et al. Continuous flow analysis method for determination of soluble iron and aluminium in ice cores. Anal Bioanal Chem 405, 767–774 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-012-6166-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-012-6166-5

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