BEHAVIOR OF ELEMENTS DURING HIGH-TEMPERATURE BONE COMBUSTION

Abstract

The number of studies of ashed biosubstrates in terms of elemental composition is sharply increasing due to the growing interest of living matter. Thus, it is extremely important to know, is the composition of the ashed material reflects the composition of the original object and how elements behave during the process of combustion. To answer these questions, an experiment on the samples of biological material was made. The purpose of the study is to analyze the behavior of elements in the process of high-temperature combustion of bone tissue. During the experiment, the following methods of analysis were used: instrumental neutron activation and mass spectrometry with inductively coupled plasma. The study shows that most of the elements are concentrated in bone ash during combustion (Li, Na, Mg, P, Ca, Ti, Cu, Zn, Ga, U, Al, Sc, Cr, Mn, Fe, As, Y,, Zr , Nb, Mo, Cd, Sb, La, Ce, Pr, Sm, Gd, Au, W, Bi), while volatilization is observed only for Br, Hg and Sn. The exclusive role of the chemichal compound of the element is shown for the analysis of its behavior. The experiment is aslo shows the role of combustion temperature to predict the behavior of element: it was found that lower temperature of ashing (500 °C) leads to more intensive volatilization of elements. In addition, an algorithm is propesed to convert the content of the element in ash of the bone to dry matter. At the same time, the dependence of the content of elements in the ash on their content in dry tissue were established using mathematical functions with high accuracy of approximation (for Fe, Mg, Zn, As, Pr, Ce, W, Zr, Cd, Cr, Sb, Mn, Ga, Nb, Pb, and U).