Determination of rare earth elements in Indian coastal monazite by ICP-AES and ICP-MS analysis and their geochemical significance.

The performance of inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) for the determination of fourteen lanthanides and yttrium in monazite was evaluated in comparison with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analysis. Geochemical reference samples were analysed for checking the precision and reproducibility of the methods. Monazite was separated by gravity and magnetic separations from the mineral black sands that were collected from Manavalakurichi (MK) and Chavara (CH) deposits along the southwest coast of India. Effective dissolution was carried out. The rare earth elements were collectively separated from concomitant matrix elements by ion-exchange chromatographic separation using the resin Dowex 50 X-8. Monazite mineral of the SW coast of India, is a light lanthanide-enriched mineral with negative Europium anomaly. The average value of the ratio (ICP-AES)result/(ICPMS)result, was 0.933 and 0.897 for MK and CH samples respectively, demonstrating that ICP methods applied under proper working conditions give satisfactory results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]