Determination of Uranium in Environmental Water by Flow Injection Analysis using a Hybrid-Imprinted Polymer

A hybrid imprinted polymer was synthesized using 3-(trimethoxysilyl) propylmethacrylate 4 vinylpyridine as the inorganic monomer, metacrilic acid as the organic monomer, and the uranile ion as the template. The synthesis was performed via a sol-gel technique. The polymer was sieved and introduced into a minicolumn, which was coupled in a flow injection system with spectrophotometric detection to preconcentrate uranium and allow its determination at low concentration. The method had a linear dynamic range between 2.0–100 µg L−1, a detection limit of 0.40 µg L−1, a preconcentration factor of 97, a concentration efficiency of 19.4 min−1, a consumptive index of 0.227 mL, and a sampling frequency of 10 analyzes h−1. The imprinted polymer had an adsorptive capacity of 1.77 mg g−1. The method was employed for the determination of uranium in effluent and river water. The precision, expressed as the relative standard deviation, was lower than 5.5%. The accuracy was investigated by comparison with alpha spectrometr...