Calibration procedure for flow injection flame atomic absorption spectrometry with interferents as spectrochemical buffers Original Research Article

The flow injection calibration procedure has been developed to correct for interferences in flame atomic absorption spectrometry. For this purpose a sample and standard solutions were injected one after the other into the carrier stream containing some reagents known to usually produce strong interference effects. Affecting the analyte in both zones to the same extent they were able to act as spectrochemical buffers. As an example, calcium in synthetic samples containing aluminium, titanium and vanadium, and also in iron ore samples, was determined. The procedure appeared to be quite effective in overcoming interferences even as strong as nearly 90%, providing analytical results with average accuracy equal to ca. 5%. Precision attained was 2–3 times inferior than that obtained using conventional FI calibration.