A new decomposition technique for the determination of sulphur or sulphur-35 in organic compounds as sulphuric acid

Abstract

A combustion procedure is presented, in which the sulphur-containing sample is burnt in a stream of oxygen and the combustion products are led onto a small heated quartz wool column wetted with dilute hydrogen peroxide. Sulphur oxides are retained as sulphuric acid on the quartz wool, while the other combustion products are completely eliminated by evaporation. The residual sulphuric acid is rinsed off with a few ml of distilled water, then titrated with standard alkali. In the case of organic compounds labelled with sulphur-35 the sulphuric acid solution is added to a liquid scintillation cocktail for radioactivity measurement. The combustion-evaporation process takes 15 min, and provides an analytical reproducibility better than 0.3% for sulphur and 0.5% for sulphur-35.