Measurement of Multiple Heavy Metals in Plating Wastewater Using Flame AA

Plating companies must comply with environmental standards for discharges from their facilities. These standards for wastewater include the Integrated Wastewater Discharge Standard (GB 8978-2002), Emission Standard of Pollutants for Electroplating (GB 21900-2008) and others. These standards require the concentration of these elements to be within the range of  0.1–2.0 mg/L. This concentration makes the analysis suitable for flame AAS or by ICP-OES. AAS instruments are popular due to their low capital cost and low running costs.However, analysts working in the plating industry or those in labs providing discharge sample testing, face a large number of samples containing varying concentrations of elements, complex test requirements and a heavy workload. Conventional AAS is slow as each sample must be measured multiple times, once for each element.