Transport methods as complementary tools for speciation purposes

Transport methods, and especially capillary electrophoresis, are shown to bring with a high simplicity and efficiency useful complementary data to solve some speciation problems. Their application in this aim is particularly interesting in the case of actinides or solutions resulting from the radioactive waste management. In the present article, three examples are proposed to illustrate this point. In the first one, the open-end capillary method is applied to point out the hydrolyzed species of Pa(V) over a wide pH range. The difficulties overcome in this case are related to the very low concentration and specific properties of the element under consideration. The second illustration concerns the complexation of uranyl by the anionic forms of some long-lived fission products (M-x(n-), with M = I and Se). For the study of these systems, capillary electrophoresis appears to be a method particularly simple and efficient. The last example deals with the quantification of selenate and selenite ions in the presence of nitrate. Capillary electrophoresis is found to be especially appropriate to the simultaneous determination of these two anionic species in such media.