from Saudi Arabia power plants in Rabigh and water desalination plant
in Jeddah, were also collected. The location of the six power plants is
shown in Fig. 1 and the description of samples sources were summarized
in Table 1. Fly ash samples were collected from a chimney, boiler
ash samples were collected from the plant boiler and ESP fly ash was
collected at the bottom of the ESP outlet.
To date, the major problem in evaluating the accuracy and precision
of the methods for analyzing oil ashes was the lack of suitable certified
reference materials. Since all the available references material are for
coal fly ashes and heavy fuel oil. IRM are usually used to solve this problem.
Three oil ash samples (IRM) were selected from Egyptian oil ash
and analyzed by different analytical methods [3] and were used for
the validation of the analytical methods used.
Ash samples were ground, homogenized and dried at about 100 °C.
Three different methods for sample digestion were used for ICP-MS
and AAS analysis: