Interlaboratory comparison for quantitative chlorine analysis in cement pastes with laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

Tobias Völker, Gerd Wilsch, Igor B. Gornushkin, Lucie Kratochvilová, Pavel Pořízka, Jozef Kaiser, Steven Millar, Gábor Galbács, Dávid J. Palásti, Patrick M. Janovszky, Shuzo Eto, Christoph Langer, Gesa Kapteina, Marcus Illguth, Jenny Götz, Marina Licht, Michael Raupach, Ismail Elhamdaoui, Mohamad Sabsabi, Paul BouchardLev Nagli, Michael Gaft, Yosef Raichlin, Luis Javier Fernández-Menéndez, Cristina Méndez-López, Nerea Bordel, Cassian Gottlieb, Christian Bohling, Riccardo Finotello, Daniel L'Hermite, Céline Quéré, Matthias B. Lierenfeld

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

Concrete structures experience severe damage during service, for example due to pitting corrosion of rebars caused by the ingress of chlorine (Cl) into the porous concrete structure. The ingress can be monitored using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS), a recently introduced civil engineering technique used to detect Cl in concrete structures in addition to conventional wet chemistry methods. The key advantages of LIBS are high spatial resolution, which is important when analyzing heterogeneous concrete samples, as well as the almost complete absence of sample preparation. To assess LIBS as a reliable analytical method, its accuracy and robustness must be carefully tested. This paper presents the results of an interlaboratory comparison on the analysis of Cl in cement paste samples conducted by 12 laboratories in 10 countries. Two sets of samples were prepared with Cl content ranging from 0.06 to 1.95 wt% in the training set and 0.23–1.51 wt% in the test set, with additional variations in the type of cement and Cl source (salt type). The overall result shows that LIBS is suitable for the quantification of the studied samples: the average relative error was generally below 15%. The results demonstrate the true status quo of the LIBS method for this type of analysis, given that the laboratories were not instructed on how to perform the analysis or how to process the data.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106632
JournalSpectrochimica Acta - Part B Atomic Spectroscopy
Volume202
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2023

Keywords

  • Cement
  • Chlorine
  • Interlaboratory comparison
  • LIBS
  • Round robin test

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