Improvement of analytical capabilities of neutron activation analysis laboratory at the Colombian Geological Survey

Journal Article · Thu Jul 07 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4955380· OSTI ID:22608526

Cañón, Y.; Porras, A.; Alonso, D.; Orozco, J. ^[1]

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1. Colombian Geological Survey, Nuclear Affairs Technical Division, Neutron Activation Analysis Laboratory, Bogota D. C. (Colombia)

The Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) laboratory at the Colombian Geological Survey has developed a technique for multi-elemental analysis of soil and plant matrices, based on Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) using the comparator method. In order to evaluate the analytical capabilities of the technique, the laboratory has been participating in inter-comparison tests organized by Wepal (Wageningen Evaluating Programs for Analytical Laboratories). In this work, the experimental procedure and results for the multi-elemental analysis of four soil and four plant samples during participation in the first round on 2015 of Wepal proficiency test are presented. Only elements with radioactive isotopes with medium and long half-lives have been evaluated, 15 elements for soils (As, Ce, Co, Cr, Cs, Fe, K, La, Na, Rb, Sb, Sc, Th, U and Zn) and 7 elements for plants (Br, Co, Cr, Fe, K, Na and Zn). The performance assessment by Wepal based on Z-score distributions showed that most results obtained |Z-scores| ≤ 3.

• OSTI ID: 22608526
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 1753; ISSN APCPCS; ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DISTRIBUTION
HALF-LIFE
MULTI-ELEMENT ANALYSIS
NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS
NEUTRONS
RADIOISOTOPES