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Sampling and Pretreatment of Tooth Enamel Carbonate for Stable Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Analysis
Published on: August 15, 2018
Pretreatment technique for siderite removal for organic carbon isotope and C:N ratio analysis in geological samples
Toti E Larson1, Jeffrey M Heikoop, George Perkins
1Los Alamos National Laboratory, Earth and Environmental Sciences Division, Hydrology, Geochemistry, and Geology Group, MS D469, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA. tlarson@lanl.gov
Abstract:
A method for the removal of siderite from geological samples to determine organic carbon isotope compositions using elemental analysis isotope ratio mass spectrometry is presented which includes calculations for % organic carbon in samples that contain diagenetic carbonate. The proposed method employs in situ acidification of geological samples with 6 N HCl and silver capsule sample holders and was tested on modern peach leaf samples (NIST 1547) and ancient lacustrine samples from Valles Caldera, New Mexico. The in situ acidification technique eliminates potential errors associated with the removal of soluble organic material using standard acid decanting techniques and allows for removal of the less soluble siderite, which is not efficiently removed using vapor acidification techniques.
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