Antimony volatile species analysis

Hopke, et al. (4) and Gaarenstroom, Perone, and Moyers (7) used the common factor analysis approach in their analyses of the Boston and Tucson area aerosol composition, respectively. In the Boston data, for 90 samples at a variety of sites, six common factors were identified that were interpreted as soil, sea salt, oil-fired power plants, motor vehicles, refuse incineration and an unknown manganese-selenium source. The six factors accounted for about 78 of the system variance. There was also a high unique factor for bromine that was interpreted to be fresh automobile exhaust. Large unique factors for antimony and selenium were found. These factors may possibly represent emission of volatile species whose concentrations do not oovary with other elements emitted by the same source. 

The most common approach taken in utilizing the hydrides for analysis is to permit the reaction to proceed for some time, holding the volatile species in a balloon attached to the system. When the reaction is complete, the hydride is analyzed by flame atomic spectroscopy. This general method has been used to determine parts-per-billion levels of arsenic and selenium in water 165-170) and to determine antimony, arsenic, and selenium using an automated system (777). Thompson and Thomerson (772) have used a sodium borohydride solution to convert various ionic forms of arsenic, bismuth, antimony, selenium, tin. 

On the basis of the data obtained from the early thermal analysis and tube furnace pyrolysis experiments performed during the initial phases of this investigation, it became apparent that in order to establish the principal reaction pathways to the generation of volatile antimony species, the volatile degradation products of the DBDPO itself would need to be characterized (24, 25). 

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