ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-9-5949-2009 Comparison of analytical methods for Humic Like Substances (HULIS) measurements in atmospheric particles Baduel C. 1 Voisin D. 1 Jaffrezo J. L. 1 Université Joseph Fourier – Grenoble 1/CNRS – INSU, Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement, Rue Molière, BP 96, 38 402 St. Martin d'Hères, France 19 08 2009 9 16 5949 5962 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/5949/2009/acp-9-5949-2009.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/9/5949/2009/acp-9-5949-2009.pdf

Humic-Like Substances (HULIS) are a major contributor to the organic carbon in atmospheric aerosol. It would be necessary to standardize an analytical method that could be easily and routinely used for HULIS measurements. We present one of the first comparisons of two of the main methods in use to extract HULIS, using I) a weak anion exchanger (DEAE) and II) the combination of two separation steps, one according to polarity (on C<sub>18</sub>) and the second according to acidity (with a strong anion exchanger SAX). The quantification is performed with a TOC analyzer, complemented by an investigation of the chemical structure of the extracted fractions by UV-Visible spectroscopy. The analytical performances of each method are determined and compared for humic substances standards. These methods are further applied to determine the water extractable HULIS (HULIS<sub>WS</sub>) and the 0.1 M NaOH alkaline extractable HULIS (HULIS<sub> T</sub>) in atmospheric aerosol collected in an Alpine Valley during winter time. This comparison, although on a limited batch of samples shows that the simpler DEAE isolation procedure leads to higher recoveries and better reproducibility than the C18-SAX procedure, and might therefore be preferable.

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