Determination of Ni, Al, P, Mg and Ca in Nickel Ores by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectrometry

The simultaneous determination of Ni, Al, P, Mg, and Ca in nickel ores by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) has been developed and is described in this paper. The sample was dissolved in nitric acid with hydrofluoric acid as flux. Perchloric acid was added and heated in order to remove hydrofluoric acid. After dissolving the salts with hydrochloric, Ni, Al, P, Mg and Ca were determined by ICP-AES. The selected spectral lines for Ni, Al, P, Mg and Ca were 221.6 nm, 396.1 nm, 178.2 nm, 285.2 nm and 393.3 nm, respectively. The matrix effect was corrected by adding the same amount of Fe as the measured sample into the standard curve. The recoveries were 98.00%-100.50%. The precisions of Ni, Al, P, Mg and Ca were all less than 1% and the detection limits were 0.0054 μg/mL, 0.0028 μg/mL, 0.0060 μg/mL, 0.0030 μg/mL and 0.0013 μg/mL, respectively. Compared with other methods, this method increased sensitivity and decreased the detection limit. It was applied to the determination of nickel ores from Indonesia, and the measured results were consistent with the standard values and RSD was below 1% (n=6).