Determination of Rare Earth Elements in Inter-well Tracers by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry

A method for rapid determination of 17 rare earth elements in inter-well tracers was established with methanol as dilution reagent. The diluting solution was optimized as containing 2% methanol and pH<2.47. Under this optimized condition, the detection precision was 1.23%～2.83 %RSD and the inter-day precision in six days was 2.25%～4.76%RSD. The linear relationship for all rare earth elements was perfect with detection limits of 2.0～9.0 ng/L. The spike recoveries for 17 rare earth elements were 85%～108%, which satisfied with the demands for trace amount of rare earth element determination.