Improvement of a pneumatic nebuliser for atomic absorption spectrometry

Abstract

The importance of the liquid transport characteristics of atomic absorption nebulisers is discussed and a simple method for determining these characteristics reported. This method was used to optimise the pumping characteristics of a commercial pneumatic nebuliser. Compared with the original nebuliser, the optimised version is significantly less sensitive to variations in the level of sample liquid (approximately a factor of five improvement). The effects of the nebulising gas pressure and sample uptake rate are presented and the improved analytical performance of the new nebuliser is shown.