Resumo de eventos cient??ficos
Sodium interference in lithium isotope ratio analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry
Autor
ANDRADE, MARIANA N. de
OTOMO, JULIANA I.
GIMENEZ, MAISE P.
NASCIMENTO, LETICIA da S.
NASCIMENTO, HENRIQUE B. do
LEAO, PAULO H.B.
CECILIO, PRISCILA de S.
FERREIRA, JOAO C.
BERGAMASCHI, VANDERLEI S.
BUSTILLOS, OSCAR V.
IBEROAMERICAN CONFERENCE ON MASS SPECTROMETRY, 3rd
Resumen
Introduction: Naturally occurring lithium consists of two stable isotopes, 6Li (7.591%) and 7Li (92.409%) and have applications in nuclear technology, pharmaceutical, automotive and geological research. Enriched 7Li isotope in LiOH form has been used as a pH regulator for Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) reducing corrosion in the primary water circuit [1-3]. The determination of lithium isotopic composition was analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry after ion exchange processes, which has been considered a promising technique for the separation of Li isotopes. One of the concerns in ICP-MS analysis is sodium interference. The presence of sodium in the lithium-containing sample has potential implications for the accuracy of isotopic ratio measurements. For this reason, a method is described for the study of sodium interference in 7Li 295,88%??? and 303,30%??? enriched solutions.
Methods: For this study, the reference standard L-SVEC was used, it has an isotopic abundance of 92.409% for 7Li and 7.591% for 6Li (6Li/7Li ratio = 0.08251) and solutions enriched at 295,88%??? (6Li/7Li ratio = 0.06661) and 303,30%??? (6Li/7Li ratio = 0.06810) of 7Li. Concentrations of 50 ??g L-1 of lithium were maintained for the solutions used and it was evaluated with the addition of 50, 100, 300, 450 and 1000 ??g L-1 of sodium on the enriched samples suffered significant changes in their isotopic ratio. The ICP-MS used for the sample analysis was a PerkinElmer SCIEX Elan 6000. For the isotopic ratio measurement the parameters used was nebulizer gas flow of approximately 0.94 L min-1 , Radio Frequency (RF) 600 W, gas flow rate 1.2 L min-1 , Peak Hopping mode, dwell time 80 and 480 ms for 6Li and 7Li respectively, 50 sweeps per reading, 1 read per replicate and 10 replicates.
Results: For this study, 24 samples were analyzed being divided into four sets of samples with 6 samples each set. The sets were composed of samples without addition of sodium and samples with addition of 50, 100, 300, 450 and 1000 ??g L-1 of sodium. The first set of samples, composed of the 295,88%??? enriched sample, had a standard deviation of 3.59???10-4. The second set of samples, composed of the 303,30%??? enriched sample, had a standard deviation of 2.63???10-4. The third and fourth set of samples, composed of aliquots of the L-SVEC standard, obtained a standard deviation of 2.22???10-4 e 2.54???10-4, respectively. Showing that the addition of sodium did not significantly interfere in the ratio of lithium isotopes 6 and 7 according to standard deviation.
Conclusions: Through the results obtained from the experiment, it was observed that the variation in the ratio between isotopes 6 and 7 of lithium was not significant for the results of analysis in ICP-MS. However, it should be noted that for the purposes of lithium isotope separation processes using ion exchange resins, the interference of sodium in the chromatographic separation needs to be evaluated.