AN OPTIMIZED ONLINE PRECONCENTRATION SYSTEM FOR ANALYSIS OF TRACE GOLD IN ORE SAMPLES

A flow injection on-line preconcentration technique, combined with gra phite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry for the determination of gold in ore samples has been presented. An alpha-amino pyridine resin (AP) was loaded onto a microcolumn as the preconcentration reagent and a solution of 90% acetone-5% HCl-5% H2O was used for the gold elution . The Scaled Simplex Method was employed to optimize the flow injectio n manifold. The selected factors were optimized by the simultaneous co nsideration of two responses, absorbance and column retention efficien cy, with only 12 tests. A detection limit of 0.065 mu g Au/l (3 sigma) with a relative standard deviation of 4.3%, was achieved. Ore samples containing gold have been analysed successfully using the proposed me thod.