Voltammetric study of the interaction between Se(IV) and dissolved organicmatter in environmental aqueous matrices

The paper deals with the interaction of selenium with several organic compo unds (of high molecular weight). The considered species should be similar i n structure and properties to those responsible for analytical problems enc ountered in the determination of selenium in aqueous environmental samples. The approach is the same adopted for studying the complexing capacity of w ater samples towards heavy metals. Particularly, some polysaccharides of di fferent structure and molecular weight have been considered and for each sp ecies, the interaction constant has been evaluated. These constants are of the same order of magnitude of those determined for real samples for "unkno wn" species, indicating the reliability of the adopted approach. Finally, t he interaction constants seem related to the molecular weight of the consid ered polysaccharides. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.