Determination of fifteen rare earth elements in Dy-Fe electrolysis dust by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry

The sample was dissolved in nitric acid and hydrofluoric acid. The fluorine was removed by perchloric acid fuming. Fifteen rare earth elements (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu and Y) in Dy-Fe electrolysis dust were determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). In order to improve the determination accuracy of high content elements, indium was used as internal standard during the determination of matrix element Dy. The calibration curves with matrix matching were used to eliminate the matrix effect on determination of rare earth elements. The content of iron in Dy-Fe electrolysis dust was very low (the mass fraction of iron was less than 1 %), so it had no influence on the determination. The proposed method was applied to the determination of one Dy-Fe electrolysis dust. The results showed that the determination results of fourteen rare earth impurity elements (La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb, Ho, Er, Tm, Yb, Lu and Y) were consistent with those obtained by ICP-MS. The total content of dysprosium and fourteen rare earth impurity elements was consistent with that obtained by gravimetric method.