Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Determination of minimum extraction times for water of plants and soils used in isotopic analysis

Author(s):

Guodong Jia, Xinxiao Yu *, Wenping Deng, Yujie Liu, Yajun Li

Recieved Date: 2012-06-30, Accepted Date: 2012-10-04

Abstract:

Water extraction of a large number of plant and soil samples are required for  isotopic analysis of water in eco-hydrological studies. Advances in isotope analysis have made rapid, high-precise analyses of stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in water a reality. With recent applications of laser spectroscopy, water extraction from materials, rather than the isotopic composition analysis of water, has become a limiting process. In this study, by cryogenic vacuum distillation, extraction time curves of different materials (soil, woody stems and herb roots) were generated to estimate the minimum extraction times (et_min) for different materials to obtain isotopically unfractionated water samples. Our results showed that et_min values varied for different materials. For arbor and shrub woody stems, et_min varied between 55 and 70 min and of all the six woody species tested, the shrub species had the least et_min of 55 min, and the arbor species had a relatively larger etmin that varied between 60 and 70 min; for roots, the herb species had an et_min of 40 min; and for soils, et_min for loam soils was 40 to 45 min and 35 min for sandy soils. The step of water extraction remains a slow process in isotopic analysis of water. Additional improvements in increasing efficiency could be by designing more ingenious extraction apparatuses or by adding more independent units to the extraction line to extract multiple water samples simultaneously. Separation of water from materials will ultimately not be a key factor that limits our ability to process large number of samples as advances in new technologies. 

Keywords:

Minimum extraction time, water extraction, cryogenic vacuum distillation, isotopic analysis

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Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2012
Volume: 10
Issue: 3&4
Category: Environment
Pages: 1035-1040

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