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Abstract This study was conducted to compare a distillation method with tube diffusion for the preparation of samples for 15 N analyses. Standard samples 1 mg of N as (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 with various 15 N excess contents (0, 3, or 10 atom % excess 15 N) were distilled or diffused and compared with nondiffused, nondistilled standards. There were no significant differences between treatments at the 0% level of enrichment. However, at the 3 and 10% levels of enrichment, both distilled and diffused standards were significantly lower than the nondistilled, nondiffused standards. No significant differences ( p < 0.05) were found between HCl and H 2 SO 4 as trapping solutions. The data indicate that diffusion is an acceptable alternative to distillation, since the 15 N values are comparable and the precision is slightly better.
Adamsen et al. (Sun,) studied this question.