Evaluation of geochemical quality control in determination of Mn in soils using a sequential chemical extraction

Sequential chemical extraction procedure has been widely used to partition particulate trace metals into various fractions and to describe the distribution and the statue of trace metals in geo-environment. One sequential chemical extraction procedure was employed here to partition various fractions of Mn in soils. The experiment was designed with quality controlling concept in order to show sampling and analytical error. Experimental results obtained on duplicate analysis of all soil samples demonstrated that the precision was less than 10% (at 95% confidence level). The accuracy was estimated by comparing the accepted total concentration of Mn in standard reference materials (SRMs) with the measured sum of the individual fractions. The recovery of Mn from SRM1 and SRM2 was 94.1% and 98.4%, respectively. The detection limit, accuracy and precision of the sequential chemical extraction procedure were discussed in detailed. All the results suggest that the trueness of the analytical method is satisfactory.