Recovering and restitution of unknown, unidentified, and unlabeled samples in laboratories using EDXRF analysis

Abstract

This Study presents a method to recover and label unknown samples in a nuclear laboratory using Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) spectrometry based on spectra differentiation and analysis. This method was found to be a new powerful tool that can be used in different laboratories where a certain number of samples cannot be identified because they have never been identified, their labeling and identification cannot be assessed because of degradation, and/or any other causes. The method was found to be simple, timely appropriate, not expensive, and powerful in identifying and recover the information needed for a sample. The EDXRF spectrometry method for recovering unknown samples in laboratories was based on the following three main points:•EDXRF method allows the elemental characterization of any sample without clear identification in a laboratory;•The displaying of several samples’ spectra on the same graph allows direct comparison and identification when the sample's data overlap one of the stored data; and•The identification of the unknown sample based on the EDXRF results: The faster method being the overlapping comparison while the elemental characterization-based identification needs high skilled expertise in X-ray fluorescence analysis.