Analytical Methods for Toxic Metals and Proteins and Synthesis of Perovskites

Abstract

In the spring of 2005 NAA was used to identify the toxic elemental metal content of sand and sediment in two dumpsites, a beach, an estuary and a coral reef. In the spring of 2006 the project expanded to include the testing of fish and mollusks along with sand and sediment using NAA, ICP and a mercury analyzer. Results of the toxic elemental metal content of the fish and mollusks were compared with EPA findings as a guide to determine if toxic metals levels were present at elevated levels. This research project required developing a method using Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) to test soil and sand samples from the island of San Salvador in the Bahamas in order to identify the elemental metals that were present in the different samples. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) had never been used before on this type of application at Youngstown State University. The process of developing an efficient and accurate method to run the experiment was very time consuming and there was a lot of trial and error in the preparation of this experiment. This was the first time that any solid or marine samples had been tested from the island of San Salvador at YSU using NAA. The purpose of the experiment was to determine if there was a correlation between the toxic metal content of the sand and sediment found in the dumpsites and the toxic metal content of the sand, sediment and marine species found on the beaches and in the ocean. A comparison was also made between the results of NAA and ICP since both methods test for metals in a sample in very different ways. The second project involved synthesizing two ternary perovskite related compounds NH₄CuF₃ (tetragonal, space group I4/mcm) and NH₄CoF₃ (Cubic, space group Pm3m) along with combinations of the target compound NH₄CuxCo₁₋xF₃. The transition between the cubic and tetragonal phase was determined using unit cell parameters, Miller indexing and Rietveld refinement. The Chemistry Department at Youngstown State University is currentl