what is the fastest method to measure 100 ppm of the heavy elements in the solid food products, plastic,and water? XRF can, but what is the best company and model? neutron activation can be used but you need a good infrastructure for that and a team. Gamma spectroscopy and HPLC-MS are good. what do you have more? technically.
Dear Said,
I would prefer x-ray fluorescence at K-edge of the heavy elements of interest (you may share what elements you are looking for).
There are two reasons for that:
a) K shell excitation as well as K-fluorescence work at quite high x-ray photon energies (some 10 keV to ~100keV); so x-ray attenuation is quite low and penetration depth is quite high (few cm region for solid food, plastics and water); thus the x-ray interaction volume is maximized und so the number of exciteable atoms.
b) for K-shell fluorescence the yield much stronger than for L-shell fluorescence.
I would not recommend any XRF system nor a company yet. You should first design the set up according to your measurement task and the boundary conditions for your remote inspection task.
XPS can also work, but it is more surface sensitive, so you have to decide. EPMA (WDS) is another option.
But Akeshwar,
for XPS you need high vacuum, so mass throughput of sample material is excluded.
There is a demand for fast data acquisition (request on 'fastest method'). So I think on conveyor belt and water/waste water pipe for material/sample transport.
Yes, in this regard you are right. actually I assume more like a food inspector, collect some samples somewhere and later on check in the lab.
Industries like faster but for research little bit late is OK.
Dear Dr. Said,
I think that your question implies that your are planning to establish elemental analysis laboratory of trace heavy elements.
As mentioned by answers, it is important to know what elements you are looking for and what materials you are intending to analyze.
I recommend XRF technique. It is multi-elemental (typically from sodium (Na) to uranium (U)), non-destructive and direct elemental analysis technique. Wide range of materials can be analyzed - in solids, liquids, powders and thin films - at detection limits starting from 100% down to less than parts-per-million (ppm) levels.
Commercial XRF spectrometers have small and simple design. Its operation costs less than other known elemental analysis techniques like ICP-MS and AAS. These systems support patch analysis, i.e. perform both data acquisition and analysis for several samples automatically and quickly. Normally, no sample preparation procedures are needed and samples can be analyzed as received.
Yes, Thank you all for your answers, but I need more details even from the companies.
I need this limit 100 ppm. I am interested in Cadmium, Mercury, Lead, Arsenic, NORM and so on ...
it is true that I hope to arrange for a Lab of the heavy metals with the international cooperation or help.
I can connect between different branches of sciences.
100 ppm is very high concentration for trace elements. It depend, which heavy metals you want to analyse. Some heavy metals give color and can be measured with help of spectrophotometer.
If there is no qualitative test, such elements are measured with atomic absorption spectro photometer.
As you said neutron activation can be used but you need a good infrastructure for that and a team so I don't prefer using it too. If you are interesting in quantitative analysis you may can use xrf with high energy, air discharge and high-analytical detector for detecting light elements also. I think this is easier than NAA.
For the analysis of trace metals in solid phase require two modes of measurement one is the used of XRF,, but for more accurate result AAS is used. I suggest the latter.
Best of luck
Laser induced break down spectroscopy (LIBS) has been proved as a tool for trace elemental analysis in solid, liquids, gases as well as in aerosols. No sample preparation is needed and it can detect any element present in the periodic table. 100 PPM level elements can be detected easily. Hand held LIBS system can be used in the field out side the laboratory also. It is a very good technique and you can set up a LIBS laboratory after having a ns time duration laser, spectrometer with gated detection system. You can get lot of literature once you search on google.
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