Extraction of carbon from water is a crucial preprocessing step for measuring 14C in environmental waters using liquid scintillation spectrometry.
This study aims to explore the optimal technological conditions for extracting carbon from water using wet oxidation method.
A wet oxidation system combining sodium persulfate and Fenton's reagent, along with phosphoric acid acidification and nitrogen bubbling, were employed for the wet oxidation carbon extraction experiments on two types of water samples with known (deionized water + sucrose) and unknown carbon components, each with a volume of 10 L. Simultaneously, carbon extraction experiments were conducted on the water samples having unknown carbon component, using a combination of wet oxidation and 185 nm ultraviolet (UV) oxidation so as to determine the optimal timing and sequence of reagent addition, as well as the optimized reagent dosage and ratio. Further experiments under optimized conditions were conducted to obtain more results for deep analysis.
Under the optimized conditions, after a 3-h reaction at 90 °C, the organic carbon extraction rate for the known carbon component (deionized water + sucrose) exceeds 96%. The total carbon extraction rate from the unknown carbon component water is (96.8±0.3)%, with an inorganic carbon extraction rate >98.5%, and an organic carbon extraction rate of (93.4±0.2)%, while the oxidation rate of tannic acid-type organic compounds is only (88±0.2)%. After the combination of wet oxidation and 185 nm UV oxidation, the total carbon extraction rate for the unknown carbon component increases to (98.3±0.5)%, with an inorganic carbon extraction rate ≥99% and an organic carbon extraction rate that can reach (95.6±1.4)%.
Results of this study indicate that wet oxidation alone cannot represent the carbon recovery rate in actual water samples using typical organic compound carbon recovery rates. The combination of wet oxidation and 185 nm UV oxidation proves to be a more effective method for carbon extraction from water.
