Determination of Boron in Coal Using Closed-Vessel Microwave Digestion and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS)

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• 作者：Shifeng Dai ; Weijiao Song ; Lei Zhao ; Xiao Li ; James C. Hower ; Colin R. Ward ; Peipei Wang ; Tian Li ; Xin Zheng ; Vladimir V. Seredin ; Panpan Xie ; Qingqian Li
• 刊名：Energy & Fuels
• 出版年：2014
• 出版时间：July 17, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：28
• 期：7
• 页码：4517-4522
• 全文大小：239K
• ISSN：1520-5029

文摘

Boron in coal is of great interest, mainly because it can be used as paleosalinity indicator; it is also of environmental concern because of its toxic effects, especially on land plants. This paper describes a new method for determination of the boron concentration in coal by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) after closed-vessel microwave digestion. Samples of raw coal rather than coal ash were used for the determination to avoid the loss of volatile organically bound boron. Addition of H₃PO₄ to the HNO₃ and HF used as reagents in the process could also significantly diminish boron volatilization during acid-drying after sample digestion. A 2% ammonia solution, which was injected into an ICP-MS spray chamber to eliminate the memory effect of boron, may reduce boron signals to blank levels (within 120 s) during ICP-MS analysis. The boron concentrations of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standard reference coal samples obtained using the ICP-MS in high-resolution mode and with ¹⁰³Rh or ¹¹⁵In used as online addition internal standards are in good agreement with the certified values.