Abstract: The sulfur transfer additive for FCC flue gas was treated by microwave-assisted digestion using hydrochloric acid and the content of cerium in the additive was determined by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). The kinds and compositions of digestion solution and the digestion temperature were investigated to optimize the microwave-assisted digestion procedure. The interelement interference in ICP-AES analysis was analyzed to determine the precision and accuracy of the method. The results showed that 0.05 g sulfur transfer additive was completely digested by 12 mL hydrochloric acid with a mass concentration of 36%-38% under the optimal digestion conditions. After sample digested, the content of cerium was determined by ICP-AES. The detection limit of ICP-AES method for analyzing the content of cerium in sample solution was 0.01mg /L, the linear range of standard curve was 0.01mg /L with a linear correlation coefficient of 0.999 95; the relative standard deviation (RSD, n = 6) was less than 4%, and the method recovery was between 93.1% and 101.0%

Key words: microwave-assisted digestion, sulfur transfer additive for FCC flue gas, ICP-AES, determination of rare earth elements