Ileana Crina Nicolescu, Elena Bucur, Agnes Serbanescu, Raluca Diodiu, Mona Barbu
Ion-chromatography
Abstract:
The aim of this work is to apply an ion – chromatography method which was initially
developed for the determination of sulfur content in fuels, on other classes of samples
as municipal waste and oil and sewage sludge.
With respect to their physical properties and texture, solid waste materials as
municipal waste, are typically strongly heterogeneous and thus, sample preparation
can be critical in obtaining reliable analysis results so that, particle size reduction and
homogenizing of the municipal waste was an important step in conducting the
experiments. The homogenization of the samples was performed by cutting and then
grinding the material in two steps: first a reduction of the particles to diameters
passing a 10-mm sieve and secondly to diameters passing a 2-mm sieve.
The sulfur extraction from the homogenized waste samples was carried out by the
combustion method in the calorimetric bomb. Sulfur as sulfate anion was then
analyzed by ion-chromatography and gravimetric techniques and the results were
compared. Depending on the nature and sulfur content of the sample, the repeatability
standard deviation sr and the relative repeatability standard deviation RSD of the
results were of the same order of magnitude for the both gravimetric and ion –
chromatography methods and they were in the range of about 0.01 – 0.05 % for sr and
in the range of about 3.23 – 6.25 % for RSD.