Environmental scientists from the University of Venice are shedding new light on the climatic cycles of the world's polar regions with help from a Purelab Ultra Analytic water purifier from Elga
Headed by Professor Carlo Barbante, the team from the Department of Environmental Sciences has been tracing the sources, geographical origin and transport pathways of heavy and platinum group metals using ice samples extracted from thousands of metres below the surface of Greenland and Antarctica.
The team track the fluctuating atmospheric changes by analysing the ice with inductively-coupled plasma sector field mass spectrometry (ICP-SFMS), a complex technique that can identify femtogram quantities of metals from only a few grams of ice.
However, such sensitivity means ultra clean sample preparation and analysis is essential, and the team chose to rigorously purify all of its experimental water with a Purelab Ultra Analytic water purifier.
The Ultra Analytic boasts full-spectrum UV photo-oxidation technology plus ultra-microfiltration to reduce organic contaminants, colloids and bacteria to ultra-trace levels.
It also continuously monitors the resulting ultra pure water in real-time to ensure a resistivity of better than 0.1MW.cm.
The technique has proved so effective that the group, in collaboration with the British Antarctic Survey and the Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Giophysique de l'Environment, France, has been able to track fluctuating metal concentrations over thousands of years.
In addition, it has been able to identify crustal dust from the arid deserts of South America, South Africa and Australia and pinpointed the exact years of major environmental events like volcanic eruptions.
It has even demonstrated the polluting effects of platinum refining and catalytic converter erosion in vehicles.