Development of a portable laser-induced plasma spectrometer with fully-automated operation and quantitative analysis capabilities

The development of a fully-automated portable LIPS instrument is described. The system integrates a 50 mJ per pulse Nd:YAG laser operating at 1064 nm, a 1/8 m spectrograph, an iCCD detector with computer controlled instrument operation, data acquisition and processing. A hand-held probe specially designed to provide sampling stability and ease of handling in field operations contains the laser head and the focusing and collection optics. Plasma light is guided to the main unit via a fiber optic cable. Results obtained in the field for steel scrap sorting are discussed regarding the analytical precision, accuracy, speed of analysis and sample variability. Additionally, the results are compared to those obtained by XRF at the laboratory, showing good correlation.