Inorganic digestion

High-temperature/low-pressure inorganic digestions are an area of application that has benefited from recent advances in vessel and sensor design. The inert properties of Teflon and its resistance to acid attack make it the material of choice for microwave pressure-vessel construction. Improved commercial systems offer additional safety precautions and improved facilities for pressure and/or temperature control. Also, the distribution of microwave radiation inside the oven cavity is fairly homogeneous. Low-pressure systems allow decomposition temperatures of about 180 °C. However, for many matrices, such temperatures are not sufficient to guarantee the complete ashing of thermoresistant sample components. 

Blood, breast milk (total, inorganic) Digestion of sample with nitric/perchloric acid overnight for total, and with H2S04 overnight for inorganic reduction and purging CVAAS 0.1 ng/g (blood) 0.04 ng/g (milk) 97% Oskarsson et al. 1996... 

The dry tosylhydrazone (20 g, 45.5 mmol) is dissolved in 750 ml of 1,2-dimethoxyethane (freshly distilled from lithium aluminum hydride) in a flame-dried 1 liter round bottom flask fitted with a 240 ml addition funnel, a drierite tube and a magnetic stirrer. A 2.05 M ether solution of methyllithium (130 ml, Alfa Inorganics, Inc.—Caution to avoid the mineral oil impurity the methyllithium solution is decanted from a cold solution which contains a precipitate) is placed in the dropping funnel and added over a 60 min period. The temperature of the reaction mixture increases to ca. 35° during the addition however, no cooling precautions are required. The highly colored reaction mixture is stirred for 7 hr and then poured into 1.5 liters of ice water. The flocculent precipitate is digested for 12 hr at room temperature to speed the filtration. After filtration the filter cake is washed with 500 ml water and dried under vacuum at 50° for several hr. The androsta-5,16-dien-3l5-ol is obtained in ca. 70% yield after recrystallization from methanol mp 138-139°. 

Animals, including humans, cannot synthesise all the different amino adds they need and thus require them in their diet. These amino adds are called the essential amino acids. Proteins in food are hydrolysed in the digestive tract and the resulting amino acids are reassembled into proteins within the animal s cells. All animals are ultimately dependent on plants for protein, as it is plants that create protein by combining inorganic nitrogen from the soil (as nitrate) with organic molecules derived from carbon from the atmosphere (as CO2). 

Munoz O, Velez D, Montoro R (1999) Optimization of the solubilization, extraction and determination of inorganic arsenic [As(III) i- As(V)] in seafood products by acid digestion, solvent extraction and hydride generation atomic absorption spectrometry. Analyst 124 601-607. 

The alkali process uses sodium hydroxide and is well known as Bayer s process. It involves relatively simple inorganic and physical chemistry and the entire flowsheet can be divided into caustic digestion, clarification, precipitation and calcination. Although mineral assemblage in bauxites is extensive, processing conditions are primarily influenced by the relative proportions of alumina minerals (gibbsite and boehmite), the iron minerals (goethite and hematite), and the silica minerals (quartz and clays-usually as kaolinite). 

Bile is produced continuously by the liver bile salts are secreted by the hepatocytes and the water, sodium bicarbonate, and other inorganic salts are added by the cells of the bile ducts within the liver. The bile is then transported by way of the common bile duct to the duodenum. Bile facilitates fat digestion and absorption throughout the length of the small intestine. In the terminal region of the ileum, the final segment of the small intestine, the bile salts are actively reabsorbed into the blood, returned to the liver by way of the hepatic portal system, and resecreted into the bile. This recycling of the bile salts from the small intestine back to the liver is referred to as enterohepatic circulation. 

As shown in the previous sections, identifying a small amount of a protein (in the order of tens of picomoles) represents a difficult problem for traditional methods of chemical analysis. The situation is even more complicated when a protein mixture of variable composition should be identified in a complex matrix containing dyes, oils, inorganic pigments, lime, etc. moreover, the analysed materials come often from the Middle Ages or even ancient times and the proteins in them could have undergone various modifications (e.g. oxidation, photodecomposition and microbial digestion) over the centuries. 

Wet digestion/ashing Sample heated with strong acid(s) Metals in organic/inorganic solid samples (e.g. metals in soil samples)... 

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