NEWS
NEW PRODUCT S
Consumables for Thermo iCAP Q ICP -MS
The Thermo iCAP Q ICP-MS was released in 2012. We can now
supply a range of consumables for this model, including nebulizers,
torches and cones. You can see these products on our website
at www.geicp.com. Click here to find products to suit your
application or here to see the full range.
INSTRU MENT NEWS
From SPECTRO – Mass Spectrometry Provides
New Ways to Extract Platinum Metals
The natural occurrence of platinum group metals, ruthenium,
rhodium, and palladium as well as osmium, iridium and platinum,
is very rare; making them extremely valuable. Even a tiny difference
in the already very-low platinum metal concentrations in a raw
material can determine whether or not extraction is worthwhile.
This is true for all forms of production, be it mining for metal ores,
as a byproduct during nickel refining, recycling of electronic scrap
or material recovery in spoil piles leftover from earlier platinum
ore mining. The SPECTRO MS inductively coupled plasma mass
spectrometer (ICP-MS) can establish the contents of platinum
metals with a high precision and sensitivity. Even determination in
the range of a few micrograms per kilogram is possible.
The high sensitivity and precision have been made possible by
internal standardization of the instrument. With the conventional
method for the solid material analysis of platinum metals, the
sample is first mixed with nickel sulfate. The mixture is then
processed to form a fused bead, whereby the platinum metals
accumulate in the nickel sulfate, and the rest of the sample can
be removed as slag. In the next step, the bead is subjected to a
laser impulse. Using this laser ablation, a portion of the material
at the sample surface is transformed into a plasma that can be
evaluated with an analytical instrument.
“The problem is that the amount of sample that passes into the plasma is strongly dependent on the sample matrix,” explains Willi
Barger, specialist for ICP mass spectrometry at SPECTRO. “If a large portion of the sample substance passes into the plasma, then the
instrument measures high concentrations. But if only a small amount is removed, then the contents are low. To minimize the resulting
fuzziness, the SPECTRO MS uses nickel, the main component in the bead, as an internal calibration standard.”
Because the SPECTRO MS is the first and onwly ICP mass spectrometer to offer fully simultaneous measurement of the complete
relevant mass range from 6Li to 238U over a very wide dynamic range, the instrument is able to determine nickel at extremely high
concentrations. At the same time, the instrument is able to detect the platinum metals group elements at trace levels.
www.geicp.com Glass Expansion Newsletter | Issue 31 | page 7
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