A NEW, LOW-COST SEPARATION TECHNIQUE FOR THE CHARACTERIZATION OF PARTICULATE MATTER OF ENVIRONMENTAL RELEVANCE - THE GRAVITATIONAL FIELD-FLOW FRACTIONATION (GRFFF)

Suspended particulate matter is known to play an important role in the transport and fate of pollutants in all aquatic systems because of th e proved ability to carry out chemical species. Transport properties o f these dispersed systems are strictly related to particles' density a nd their dimensional distribution function. Dispersed matrixes of envi ronmental origin are often very complex because of the high polidisper sity index and the multimodal character of both density and dimensiona l distributions. On the other hand, most of the classical methods for PSD and density analysis are quite expensive and are not separative te chniques which are, for the above purposes, highly recommended. In thi s work, Gravitational Field-Flow Fractionation (GrFFF), a low-cost sep aration technique, is presented for the dimensional characterization a nd quantitative analysis of aqueous dispersions of supermicron particl es.