Analysis of iron, steel and alloys

Many authors [15, 21, 25, 28, 29, 31, 81, 82, 106-108, 111, 114, 119, 123, 126—129, 131, 137, 141, 142, 147, 153] have reported studies on the analysis of common acid solutions of different steels where one to a maximum of six elements are determined sequentially from one sample weighing. Elements commonly analysed include Al, Co, Cr, Cu, Mg, Mn, Mo, Ni, Si, Ti, V and W. There has also been no lack of effort to determine elements such as As [54, 101, 142] that are difficult to analyse using atomic absorption. Efforts to produce standard methods have also been described [5, 56]. The closest to a universal method is the description of the 

For almost all types of steel there is a similar problem in the dissolution step. Three elements, Al, Si, and W, behave differently in the analysis of the total content and require special methods. These methods are simple extensions of the technique, which in the case of the determination of acid soluble Al or Si, can simply be omitted. When, during the dissolution, an oxide residue remains, which in general consists of Si02 or A1203, this must be brought into solution with a fusion, and added to the rest of the sample. If the W concentration is higher than 0.5%, the dissolving acid solution should also include phosphoric acid. Thus, it is possible to produce a universal method for the elements that are contained in steel and which influence its properties. 

---