Liquid Membranes for Chemical Speciation and Fractionation

Dear Colleagues,

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry defines “speciation” of an element as the “distribution of an element amongst defined chemical species in a system” and “speciation analysis” as the “analytical activities of identifying and/or measuring the quantities of one or more individual chemical species in a sample”. From a wider point of view, fractionation is defined as the “process of classification of an analyte or a group of analytes from a certain sample according to physical (e.g., size, solubility) or chemical (e.g., bonding, reactivity) properties”. [1]

Both fractionation and speciation studies are of interest to many scientists doing research on different fields (chemists, biologists, geologists, environmentalists, etc.), and mainly in environmental studies. Thus, knowledge on chemical species is required, for example, to stablish the characteristics and behavior of ecosystems, or to study the effects of toxic elements on animals and plants.

Most speciation studies require the application of separation methodologies together with appropriate detection techniques. At this moment, many speciation analyses may be performed by using the combination of chromatographic separation approaches and sensitive detection techniques, such as atomic or ionic spectroscopy. However, the development of non-chromatographic sample preparation methodologies has powered the interest for its application to fractionation and chemical speciation. Among them, liquid membranes may be used as a valuable tool to selectively separate chemical species from real samples, since they allow performing very simple and low aggressive extraction processes maintaining the inalterability of the samples during chemical separation.  

The publication of this Special Issue will introduce recent advances in this interesting application of liquid membranes and will review the state-of-the-art and future perspectives.

[1] Templeton, D.M.; Ariese, F.; Cornelis, R.; Danielsson, L.G.; Muntau, H.;  van Leenwen, H.P.; Lobinski, R. Guidelines for terms related to chemical speciation and fractionation of elements. Definitions, structural aspects, and methodological approaches. Pure Appl. Chem. 2000, 72, 1453–1470.

Prof. Dr. Carlos Moreno
Guest Editor

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• Liquid Membranes
• Separation Techniques
• Chemical Speciation
• Fractionation
• Trace Elements