Determination of phosphorus, sulfur and chlorine in high-purity aluminium

Abstract

Multi-step procedures for the determination of phosphorus, sulfur and chlorine are described and tested against established methods and on reference materials. Phosphorus is separated as hydrogen phosphide, extracted as phosphomolybdic acid, reduced to molydenum blue and measured photometrically (detection limit 0.05 μg/g). Sulfur is separated after reduction as hydrogen sulfide or by means of pyrohydrolysis and measured by ICP-OES (detection limit 0.1 μg/g). Chloride can be measured by ion chromatography after pyrohydrolytic separation (detection limit 0.1 μg/g). The determination of sulfur was also successfully tested on copper and steel samples.