A Portable Tungsten Coil Atomic Emission Spectrometer for the Simultaneous Determination of Metals in Water and Soil Samples

Tungsten coil atomic emission spectrometry (WCAES) has been evaluated as a potentially portable technique for field applications. The tungsten coil (W-coil) was extracted from a commercially available slide projector bulb and used as both the atomizer and the excitation source. The coil was powered by a small solid-state power supply. A hand-held CCD spectrometer, powered from a laptop computer, collected the signal. Fifteen elements were used to evaluate the portable system. For elements in the UV region, LODs were increased by a factor of 2000 for Cu; 200 for Ag; and 25 for Co through a 400-W solid state power supply compared to a 200-W solid state power supply. Signals for Al, Cr, Ga, Mn, Li and V in the near UV region also increased around a factor of 25. Therefore, the WCAES device could be used for elements in both the visible and UV regions, and the system could be taken into the field to measure elements in various samples.