Flame atomic emission spectrometric determination of aluminium in a bovine blood plasma matrix

A flame atomic emission spectrometric method, is described for the determination of aluminium in bovine blood plasma matrices. Plasma samples are wet-digested and solutions are aspirated into a conventional nitrous oxide-acetylene flame. Analyte emission is monitored at 396.15 nm with corrections for background emission being obtained from measurements several tenths nm on both sides of the aluminium line. The mean recovery of 0.3–5 μg/ml aluminium added to model solutions containing 500–5000 μg Na/ml, 50–1000 μg Ca/ml, 2000–5000 μg K/ml, or simulated plasma digests containing Na, K, and Ca was 100,6% (SD = 10.9, df = 60); the mean recovery of 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 μg/ml aluminium added to blood plasma before digestion was 94.3% (SD = 9.8, df = 33) indicating no serious interferences. For standard solutions, the detection limit (signal: peak-to-peak noise = 1) was 0.02 μg/ml by flame emission, and 0.12 μg/ml by atomic absorption measurements with the same instrument. A sample taken through the analytical procedure, gave a detection limit of 0.05 μg/ml suggesting the submicrogram per milliliter region as the lower practical limit of the method.