Estimations of rare earth elements in geological materials by ion chromatography and a comparison with analysis by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry

Ion Chromatography (IC) as an analytical tool was primarily developed for the analysis of anionic species is an instrument of choice for estimating a suite of ions in one chromatogram. This technique has also been used for estimation of various other elements including rare earths. The present work describes method for separation of rare earth elements by Ion Chromatography and post column colour development with Arsenazo III before spectrophotometric determination. Also, a comparison of the values obtained by this method with those obtained by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP OES) has been shown in this work