Comparison of the solid sampling techniques laser ablation-ICP-MS, glow discharge-MS and spark-OES for the determination of platinum group metals in Pb buttons obtained by fire assay of platiniferous ores

Femtosecond laser ablation-ICP-mass spectrometry analysis of a heavy metallic matrix: Determination of platinum group metals and gold in lead fire-assay buttons as a case study

“…By comparing the corresponding results reported in 12 with those in Table 4, the first conclusion is that the femtosecond LA-ICP-MS set-up shows a higher detection power: levels of Au in SARMs 64 and 65 and of Ir in SARMs 7b and 64 that were found to be below the LOD offered by the nanosecond LA-ICP-MS set-up could now be determined quantitatively. Of course, this observation is also mirrored in the limits of detection as attainable with both set-ups (Table 3).…”

“…10 In earlier papers, we have presented an evaluation of the capabilities of laser ablation ICP-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and other solidsampling techniques for the direct analysis of the Pb fire assay buttons obtained. 11,12 In this work, the merits of a femtosecond LA-system for analyzing these materials were evaluated and compared to those characteristic for the nanosecond LA-system used in previous work.…”

“…These were determined according to IUPAC's 3s-crtiterion, 41 whereby a pure Pb button (no PGMs added) was used as a blank. The LODs thus obtained are summarized in Table 3, wherein also the LODs as obtained using nanosecond LA-ICP-MS and presented in a previous work 12 have been included for comparison. When using fs LA-ICP-MS, the LODs range from 0.003 to 0.015 mg g À1 , resulting in an improvement with a factor of 3 to 10 when compared to the values for ns LA-ICP-MS.…”

Determination of palladium, platinum and rhodium in used automobile catalysts and active pharmaceutical ingredients using high-resolution continuum source graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry and direct solid sample analysis

“…Such an approach permits to improve the sensitivity, considerably increases the sample throughput and reduces the risk of contamination/ losses. Thus, it is not surprising to see that different applications reporting on the determination of various PGMs by means of glow discharge mass spectrometry [8,9], laser ablation-ICP-MS [10][11][12][13][14] or optical emission spectrometry (OES) [15], electrothermal vaporization-ICP-MS [16,17], laser induced breakdown spectrometry [18,19] or X-ray fluorescence (XRF) [20][21][22] have been published. Obviously, only those techniques capable of providing a high sensitivity together with the maximum selectivity could be suited for this task.…”

Rendering wastes obtained from gold analysis by the lead-fusion fire-assay method non-hazardous

“…Several reports in literature discuss gold analysis by the fireessay method emphasizing the need to eliminate or reduce the amount of lead-containing waste which is unavoidably produced by this technique (Resano et al, 2006;Balaram, 2008;Berdnikov et al, 2010;Caporali et al, 2010;Roy et al, 2010;Compernolle et al, 2011). According to the Internal Round Robin for Gold Analysis (2007), there are 82 laboratories worldwide using the Pb-FA technique for gold evaluation, all of which will be sources of this waste.…”