An Intercomparison Study of Analytical Methods for the Determination of Magnesium in Low Alloy Steel

Abstract

In an intercomparison study three low alloy steel materials were analyzed on their content of the trace element Mg, and five different analytical techniques were used, namely spark‐OES, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP‐OES), inductively coupled plasma time of flight mass spectrometry (ICP‐TOFMS), inductively coupled plasma quadrupole mass spectrometry (ICP‐QMS), and glow discharge mass spectrometry (GD‐MS). Solid steel discs were used for analysis with spark‐OES and GD‐MS. For the analyses with ICP‐OES, ICP‐TOFMS, and ICP‐QMS steel chips were wet‐digested in aqua regia, and the wet‐digestion was performed either in polypropylene tubes placed in a heating block or in Teflon pressure vessels using a microwave assisted system. The Mg concentrations obtained for the three steel materials were: 2.0, 2.8, and 10.3 µg g−1, respectively, and the spread in results was acceptable, giving RSD values in the range of 20–30%.

Atomic spectrometry update. Industrial analysis: metals, chemicals and advanced materials

“…A comparison of five analytical methods for the determination of Mg in low alloy steel was conducted by Recknagel et al 6 Spark-OES, ICP-OES, ICP-TOF-MS, ICP-QMS and GD-MS were used to measure Mg in three different samples and the average concentrations of 2.0, 2.8, and 10.3 mg g À1 were obtained. Overall, precision expressed as RSD yielded values of 20-30%, which although large, were considered to be acceptable by the authors.…”

“…These instruments were significantly smaller and lighter than previous high resolution spectrometers. The authors applied their instrumentation to the rapid characterization of the isotopic composition of U and H and highly enriched samples of 6 Li and 7 Li. This system is likely to be of considerable use in numerous other areas of research, potentially including the analysis of chemical or biological warfare agents.…”