Chapter 10: Environmental Applications of Fast Field-cycling NMR Relaxometry
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Published:11 Oct 2018
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Special Collection: 2018 ebook collectionSeries: New Developments in NMR
P. Conte, in Field-cycling NMR Relaxometry: Instrumentation, Model Theories and Applications, ed. R. Kimmich, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2018, ch. 10, pp. 229-254.
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Environmental sustainability is the modern scientific-field keyword, as a result of the novel awareness about environmental safety that occurred since the “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” in 1992. For this reason, new and environmentally sustainable analytical techniques have been (and still are being) produced. The main focus of these techniques is not only the use of “green” chemicals (i.e. chemical compounds with a low environmental impact), but also waste reduction through the simplification of analytical procedures such as extractions and purifications. In particular, the modern analytical trend is to find procedures that allow the investigation of complex systems as a whole. Fast field-cycling (FFC) NMR relaxometry is becoming a very reliable technique for the evaluation of the molecular dynamics in soils, sediments and water. It may allow the understanding of the fate of environmental contaminants, and also the mechanisms of nutrient exchange between soils and plant roots. This chapter reports the latest findings in FFC-NMR relaxometry applied to samples from the aforementioned environmental compartments, and the main mathematical models used for data elaboration in environmental field applications.