Flame Photometer Uses: It’s a broader range than you think

Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (AES), or Flame Photometry, as it is more commonly known, has a surprisingly large range of uses. Most people think of bioassays when the topic comes up. Few talk about industrial manufacturing, quality control, pollution monitoring, remote sensing, process automation, or other topics.

Technological innovations have allowed flame photometers to penetrate many markets. They now feature high reliability, the ability to operate continuously with little maintenance, and even remote control options for distance monitoring.

Medicinal Research

Sodium and potassium levels in blood and tissues are important because those are our body's electrolytes. Knowing all of these levels can help with the diagnosis of many disease processes. Calcium levels can be diagnostic for assessing bone disease; lithium levels can help judge the effectiveness of medications, and potassium and sodium can help identify deficiencies leading to cognitive impairment, neurological failure, and toxicity for the whole body.

(New paragraph below, merged in from the retiring post, a distinct detection angle not covered above.)

Flame photometry is also used to look at urine samples to detect irregularities in ion levels, which can be a signal of kidney damage where the kidneys are not properly filtering out important electrolytes from the body.

Pharmacology

Testing drugs to make sure they have the correct amount of the claimed ingredients is vital for safety. The glass or plastic vials for vaccines are tested to see if they elute contaminants into the medicine before such containers are approved for use. The same testing is done for IV bags: once filled with ionic solutions of sodium or potassium reagents, they are tested to make sure they comply with the package claims.

Quality Control

Personal protective equipment must meet certain standards; N95 masks must resist moisture, saliva, and viruses. These are tested by placing the mask between a pressurised chamber filled with vaporised saline solution, and anything that passes through the mask goes to the flame photometer, set to detect sodium from the saline. How much passes through determines the rating for the mask; for QA testing, it must meet its stated rating to be sold.

Food Industry

The food "final product", whether a can of soup, a bag of frozen peas or a candy bar, must meet the specifications declared on the label. Beyond testing the actual end product, manufacturers also test ingredients throughout the process to ensure seamless production, adjusting for natural variation batch to batch rather than re-labelling.

Photometers are also used to detect the presence of sugar in water, using a potassium standard mixed with the flow of water. If a rise in potassium levels is detected, this indicates that sugar is present. This is an indirect qualitative determination: rather than measuring sugar concentration directly, it establishes a ‘yes or no’ answer to whether sugar is present in the solution.

Water Desalination Processes

By installing remotely monitored flame photometer stations throughout the desalination process, deviations and errors can be discovered long before the entire process is affected. An unmanned testing station can monitor water quality continuously, reporting to a central location, and difficulties can be dealt with before they become serious problems.

Soil Analysis

The accuracy of flame photometry is relied upon for analysis of soil, whether it's a farmer's field, tailings from a mine, or production from a salt mine. By tracking the potassium fraction, the phosphorous and nitrogen components can be deduced, and money can be saved by not applying more fertiliser than is actually needed.

Wastewater Management

Water treatment plants continuously monitor sodium, potassium, lithium, calcium, barium, and several other elements. In some low-lift situations, wastewater is partially recirculated once treated, especially where water is ordinarily scarce, and flame photometer monitoring makes it straightforward to confirm the water is potable before sending it back into the system.

Concrete Evidence & the Chemical Industry

Flame photometers play an important role in production control and process monitoring in the chemical industry, one example being the cement industry. Concrete Cancer is caused by the presence of excessive sodium and potassium in the mix, which makes the material flake and crack, while the presence of calcium makes concrete even stronger. Flame photometry reveals these substances early, allowing mitigation before the cement is blended into concrete.

What Flame Photometry Isn't Typically Used For

It's worth noting that flame photometry isn't the usual choice for testing drinking water directly, due to its limited range of detectable analytes. That is usually done with an ICP-OES instrument instead, so a much broader range of elements, including heavy metal contaminants, can be detected at once.

If you want your results to be more consistent and reliable, give us a call and we can provide product-specific training and make you the experts in your field with faultless results and accurate data.