Quantitative determination of chlorine concentration by measurement of sodium deposited on steel via laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

Accurate measurements of chlorine contained in salts deposited on steel surfaces at low concentrations, frequently in challenging environmental conditions and in areas with limited access, are of significant interest for dry cask storage monitoring due to the potential role of chlorine in enhancing stress corrosion cracking. Laserinduced spectroscopy (LIBS) enables such measurements, but can suffer from the interference of the intense atomic emission lines of iron with the much less intense atomic emission lines of chlorine. In this work, homogeneous sea salt standards have been created using a nebulizer and LIBS measurements of chlorine concentration in the range of 0.0025-0.25 g/m2 have been performed to detect and quantify sodium contained in this artificial sea salt deposition, as a benchmark for future field tests.