A large scale production and widespread use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have inevitably caused concern regarding the release of CNTs into the environment. Detection and quantification of CNTs in the environment requires accurate and reproducible methods. The major issue for the environmental measurement of CNTs is the interference from high carbon content in environmental media such as soil, sludge, and water. Therefore, a sensitive and specific quantitative detection method for CNTs in environmental samples is highly needed.<br/>Since CNTs can be selectively heated by the microwave energy due to their high dielectric constant, a device measuring the temperature rise of CNTs after microwave exposure was set up to determine the mass of single-walled CNTs (SWCNT), multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs) and carboxylated CNTs (MWCNT-COOH) in quartz sand, soil, and anaerobic sludge samples. A series of linear relationship between the CNT mass and temperature rise was built for three environmentally relevant matrices spiked with known amount of different types of CNTs. The detection limits for the method in sand were determined to be 22.70, 18.61 and 32.16 µg/g for SWCNTs, MWCNTs and MWCNT-COOH at 133 W /15 sec microwave exposure. The results showed that MWCNTs were more sensitive to the microwave energy than SWCNTs and MWCNT-COOH. The presence of excess of organic, inorganic carbon and other carbon-based nanomaterials did not influence the microwave responses of CNTs. Moreover, the length and diameter of CNTs did not affect the microwave behavior either.<br/>

Development of a microwave induced heating method for the detection of carbon nanotubes in environmental matrices

254th National Meeting (2017)

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