A flow system for copper on-line preconcentration, employing a tannin resin prepared from Eucalyptus Saligna Sm, with determination by flame atomic absorption spectrometry is proposed. The manifold was designed by assembling an automatic injector-commutator and a set of three-way solenoid valves which were controlled by a microcomputer with a PCL-711 interface card running a software written in QuickBASIC 4.5. The analyte was concentrated by pumping the sample solution through the resin column during 60 s, followed by elution with a 1.0 mol L-1 hydrochloric acid solution. Accuracy was assessed by analyzing acidic digests of certificate reference materials and no significant difference at 95% confidence level was observed. Other profitable features such as throughput of 48 determinations per hour, reagent consumption of 67 mL per determination, relative standard deviation of 3% (n=10) for a typical sample presenting concentration of 21.75 ng mL-1 Cu, detection limit of 1 ng mL-1 and enrichment factor of 10 times were also achieved.
preconcentration; flow system; copper determination; atomic absorption spectrometry
