Organic ICP-OES with oxygen gas

Question

Hi, 
 I'm trying to set-up a method for organic ICP-OES. The method uses oxygen gas (percentage can be varied in the ICP expert software). We currently have a mixed gas hooked up to the ICP-OES which consists of 20% oxygen and 80% argon. 
 My question is: Does the software think 100% oxygen is used in the method? So if I want to do a measurement with 20% oxygen will I need to set the method to 20% or do I fill in 100% because the gas is already mixed to 20%? 
 Thanks in advance!

edgarvs · Accepted Answer

Hi, 
 The regulation is like the following. 
 If the optional oxygen/argon gas flow is set to 30% then 30% of the pre-set auxiliary flow is a mix of 20/80 oxygen/argon. 
 So if the aux flow is set to 1 l/min and the percentage is set to 100% only 20% (0,2 l/min) is really oxygen what's added to the aux flow. you can actually follow the real flow of the aux and oxygen/argon addition in the "Dashboard" in "Instrument" menu. 
 More important is to see what's happening with the plasma and carbon build up when selecting the correct flow for the oxygen addition. Don't add to much oxygen to the plasma only just enough to avoid carbon buildup and to get better background profile on some of the spectral line that suffer carbon bound background noise. 
 
 Cheers, 
 Edgar

Organic ICP-OES with oxygen gas

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