A comparison of a wet pressure digestion method with other commonly used wet and dry-ashing methods

Abstract

A wet-digestion method for the determination of metals and phosphorus in biological material that involves the use of pressure is described and comparisons are made with the standard dry and wet-ashing methods and the sulphuric acid-hydrogen peroxide method. Big sage (Artemisia tridentata) was chosen as the test material. The pressure method has the advantage of being able to digest many samples at the same time (to the extent that the cations sought and phosphorus can be extracted into dilute nitric acid) with very little equipment, small volumes of acid and with a low digestion temperature (that of hot tap water), with the precision of more laborious standard methods.