Study on determination of antimony in environmental samples by neutron activation analysis

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in the determination of antimony in environmental samples since this element is cumulative and potentially toxic at very low concentrations. Moreover, the quantification of antimony presents difficulties due to its low concentrations in the samples and to the interference problem in the analyses. In this study, neutron activation analysis procedure was established in order to obtain reliable results for Sb determination in environmental samples. For this study ten reference materials were analyzed. Aliquots of these materials and synthetic standard of Sb were irradiated at the IEA- R1 nuclear reactor under a thermal neutron flux of about 5x1012 n cm-2 s-1 for 8 or 16 hours. The induced gamma activities of 122Sb and 124Sb were measured using a hyperpure Ge detector. Antimony concentrations were calculated by comparative method and the uncertainties of the results were estimated using statistical counting errors of the sample and standard. Relative errors calculated demonstrated that the accuracy of the results depends on the Sb radioisotope measured and the decay time for counting.