solid-phase extraction with diethyldithiocarbamate as chelating agent for preconcentration and trace determination of copper, iron and lead in fruit wine and distilled spirit by flame atomic absorption spectrometry

Some heavy metals that present in wine and distilled spirit as background contamination are generally found at trace level particularly less than detection limit of common analytical techniques including flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS). Thus, preconcentration method of the trace metals was developed. The optimum conditions for diethyldithiocarbamate (DDTC) complexes of Cu, Fe and Pb were then investigated for the preconcentration step using C18 solid-phase extraction prior to measurement by FAAS. The preconcentration factor of 15-fold was obtained with the appropriate ratio of sample volume used (150 mL) to 10 mL final volume giving their method recoveries of Cu, Fe and Pb found in the ranges of 96.5-107, 102-116 and 91.7-107%, respectively. Precision determinations (n = 10) for 0.1 mg L-1 of Cu, Fe and Pb each in a model solution were 3.7, 4.2 and 7.1 %RSD respectively. The detection limits (3SD) of Cu, Fe and Pb were found to be 1.4, 3.3 and 5.7 μg L-1, respectively. The developed method was applied to ten samples of local fruit wines and five samples of distilled spirits, resulting in the ranges of 0.012-0.80 and 0.12-8.8 mg L-1 for Cu; 0.18-3.4 and 0.036-0.29 mg L-1 for Fe and 0.0070-0.053 and 0.014-0.026 mg L-1 for Pb, respectively. Therefore, the method is simple and inexpensive for routine analysis of the trace metals in these samples to overcome limit of detection of the instrument used.