An Industrial Application of Geiger-Müller Counters to the Analysis of Phosphorus in Steels

Abstract

The phosphorus content of steels is determined by means of a Littrow quartz spectrograph equipped with Geiger-Müller photoelectron counter tubes. Emphasis is placed on operation and maintenance procedures for open hearth and foundry furnace control. Arc excitation, which is essential for sensitivity and resolution of the phosphorus line from a nearby copper line, introduces variables requiring close regulation. Temperature of the spectrograph must be maintained at nearly a constant value to prevent the shifting of spectral lines at the focal plane of the instrument. Each determination requires about one minute after the sample has been prepared and loaded, and accuracies are comparable to routine chemical results.