ANALYTICAL SYSTEM FOR THE ANALYSIS OF FERROVANADIUM USING SPARK ABLATION COUPLED WITH INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA ATOMIC EMISSION-SPECTROMETRY

Spark ablation coupled with excitation in an argon inductively coupled plasma is applied to the analysis of remelted ferrovanadium. A medium-voltage spark at a high-repetition rate was used as the sampling technique for samples prepared using a high-frequency remelting system. Problems of sample fracturing were avoided by dilution of the ferroalloy with pure iron. Calibration graphs were obtained with samples prepared from a commercial ferrovanadium alloy, previously analysed using standard wet chemical methods and diluted with pure iron at two different dilution ratios. The two FeV to Fe dilution ratios were selected in order to cover the desired range of concentrations. When using an Fe line as the internal standard, the relative standard deviations for the major element (V) are below 0.3% (V content, 35-80%). The limits of determination for the minor elements (Mn, Cu, Al and Si) are below the required ISO specifications. The accuracy of the developed method was tested by the analysis of three reference materials.