Abstract
The Donnan membrane technique (DMT), in which a synthetic or natural solution (the "donor") is separated from a ligand-free solution (the "acceptor") by a cation-exchange membrane, is a recognized technique for measuring the concentration of a free metal ion in situ, with coupling to electrochemical detection allowing for the quantification of the free metal ion directly on site. However, the use of the DMT requires waiting for the free metal ion equilibrium between the donor and the acceptor solution. In this paper, we investigated the possibility of using the kinetic information and showed that non-equilibrium experimental calibrations of Cd and Pb with the ISIDORE probe could be used to measure free metal concentrations under conditions of membrane-controlled diffusion transport. The application of this dynamic approach made it possible to successfully determine the concentration of free Cd in synthetic and natural river samples. Furthermore, it was found that the determination of free Cd from the slope was not affected by the Ca concentration ratio between the acceptor and donor solution, as opposed to the traditional approach based on Donnan equilibrium. This ISIDORE probe appears to be a promising tool for determining free metal ions in natural samples.