Preliminary study on aerosol particle addition calibration method for on-line quantitative analysis of airborne radioactive particles with ICP-MS

An ambient aerosol concentration enrichment system coupled with ICP-MS for real-time monitoring of airborne radioactive particles is now under development. ICP-MS is very sensitive to sample introduction conditions, so it is necessary to develop an easy-use calibration method for on-line quantitative analysis in field application. In this paper, a calibration method using standard solution instead of monodisperse particles was established and validated preliminarily. First of all, four parameters for the method were determined experimentally, including: uptake flow rate and nebulisation efficiency of the Microconcentric nebuliser, nebulisation/transport efficiency of Aridus Desolvating Sample Introduction System, and Relative Sensitivity Factor between Tb-159 and Yb-174. Then, monodisperse terbium nitrate particles were generated by a commercial Vibrating Orifice Aerosol Generator. Continuous aerosols of ytterbium nitrate droplets were nebulised from standard solution. They were mixed together, desolvated through the membrane dryer and introduced into ICP-MS for on-line analysis of terbium nitrate particles. The air sampled from nuclear environment was also introduced into ICP-MS to investigate the effect of flow rate on instrument responses. Finally, atom numbers of Tb-159 in discrete terbium nitrate particles were determined using the calibration method and compared to the calculated value. Results show that when air flow rate increase from 10 mL min(-1) to 100 mL min(-1), the ratio of Tb-159 ion count to Yb-174 ion intensity keeps constant although instrument sensitivity decreases by a factor of 25. The relative standard deviation of Tb-159 atom number measured is better than 18%. The discrepancy with the calculated value could be attributed to the over-estimation of atom number in the particles generated by VOAG because there was some liquid leakage in the VOAG.