Hazards of errors in the palladium storage in determination by GFAAS

Losses of palladium in weakly acidic solutions during storage process, which occur by its hydrolysis and/or adsorption onto the surface of storage vessels, are studied and ways of overcoming them are proposed. A fast and effective procedure for cleaning of laboratory ware with 0.2 mol L(-1) thiourea in 0.1 mol L(-1) HCl is described. Preparing palladium solutions in quartz vessels as well as using autosampler cups made from quartz glass, enabled to diminish the detection limit of palladium in synthetic solutions by GFAAS from 0.94 ng/mL to 0.27 ng/mL.