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Updated: May 22, 2026

Preparation of Food Samples Using Homogenization and Microwave-Assisted Wet Acid Digestion for Multi-Element Determination with ICP-MS
Published on: December 22, 2023
[Determination of 9 heavy metal elements in sediment by ICP-MS using microwave digestion for sample preparation]
Shu-xuan Liang1, Xin Wang, Hong Wu
1College of Chemistry and Environmental Science, Hebei University, Baoding 071002, China. liangsx168@yahoo.com.cn
Abstract:
A method for determining 9 heavy metal elements in soil and sediment was developed by using microwave digestion-ICP-MS. The mixture of HNO3-H2O2-HF was found to give the best digestion results for soil and sediment of samples. Under the optimized conditions, the samples were analyzed by ICP-MS with the triple internal standard elements Ge, In and Bi. The results showed that all their correlation coefficients were over 0.999. The national standard soil referenee material (ESS-1 GSBZ50011-88) was analyzed by the described method and the results were accorded with the reference values. The measurement precision range was from 0.48% to 5.73% in terms of relative standard deviation. The recoveries and the limits of detection were in the ranges of 98.0% to 100.7% and 0.011 to 0.328 microg x L(-1) respectively, and 11 sediment samples were determined by the proposed method. It was indicated that the method was reliable for determining heavy metal elements in soil and sediment samples.
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