Comparison of IC and ICP-OES for measuring metals concentrations in extracts of wood ashes from biomass incinerators

Description

As the amount of biomass used in incinerators for the production of electric power and heat increases, the interest in utilization of the remaining ashes increases as well. On the one hand these ashes still contain some nutrients which could be useful for the growth of plants when spread on fields or greenland, on the other hand also heavy metals can be found in the ashes which can have harmful impacts on the environment. Therefore it is important to determine not only the heavy metal concentration of the ashes but also their soluble amount. In this investigation biomass ashes from wood combustion were extracted with distilled water at room temperature in order to determine the amount of water soluble metals. All solutions were analysed by ion chromatography (IC) and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The methods were compared regarding to the following parameters: LOD, LOQ, RSD, working range and accuracy as well as costs of analysis. The results for the samples obtained by both methods were then compared with a paired t-test. Both methods were found to be applicable for the given analytical task.

Period	5 Sept 2009
Event title	Junganalytikerforum
Event type	Workshop
Location	Innsbruck, AustriaShow on map