The safeguards community currently lacks a method to rapidly determine the chemical form of radioactive and non-radioactive compounds in real time during inspection activities. Chemical speciation identification can provide important information on both the types of materials that are collected during environmental sampling and can inform inspectors as to where to focus efforts during inspections or complementary access visits. Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) is an established field technique for the detection of explosives, narcotics, and other organic compounds. More recently, electrospray ionization (ESI) has been used to introduce inorganic compounds to IMS instruments for analysis. These techniques have shown the ability to supply chemical information on the compounds analyzed. Although these laboratory based instruments use a liquid-based injection system, there is evidence in the literature of unaltered and intact pharmaceutical tablets being volatilized and ionized in open atmosphere using heat and a Ni-63 source. This work determined that a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) IMS could be used for the identification of solid uranium compounds directly after sampling using a COTS sample swipe.
A laboratory experiment is described in which students compare two methods for the determination of the calcium content of commercial dietary supplement tablets. In a two-week sequence, the sample tablets are first analyzed via complexometric titration with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and then, following ion exchange of the calcium ion present for hydronium ion, by acid−base titration with sodium hydroxide. Upon completion of the laboratory work, students pool their data with classmates and perform a statistical analysis to determine whether the average values of the calcium content obtained by the two methods are equivalent. When taken together with such considerations as analysis time, accuracy, simplicity and ease of use, susceptibility to interference, and waste generation, these results enable the students to evaluate the relative merit of the two approaches to calcium determination. In so doing, they are introduced to an important aspect of "real-world" chemical analysis, namely, selection of the method best suited for the determination of a particular analyte in a given sample.
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