Evaluation of Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry as a Method for the Elemental Analysis of Organic Compounds

The application of inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) to the elemental analysis of organic compounds is evaluated successfully for seven nonmetallic elements. A comparison of this method with previously reported microwave techniques shows that, while both methods are sensitive (detection limits in the low nanogram region), ICP-OES has fewer complications and appears to be less prone to interferences than the analogous microwave techniques. The results of these studies suggest that ICP-OES should be applicable to the simultaneous multielement analysis of the gaseous effluents from a gas chromatograph.