Direct cadmium determination in sediment samples by flame atomic absorption spectrometry using multivariate calibration procedures
Abstract
A direct solid sampling procedure by T
-quartz cell set between the burner and the optical path. Background signals were always low and a characteristic mass of 0.21 ng Cd was found and an absolute limit of detection of 0.25 ng (3s), or 0.25 µg g−1 if a sample mass of 1 mg was used. Using the proposed multivariate calibration procedure the results were considered satisfactory regarding both agreement with the results from reference samples (from 96.8 to 101.7%) and precision (relative standard deviation from 5.5 to 7.0%). With this procedure errors occurring when conventional univariate calibration was used (up to 64%) were reduced to less than 4%.