Dear Shapna,

Peak broadening can be caused by ash. I run sequences of 50 analyses highest and
remove ashes thouroughly. When I run barite samples peak shape gets worse to the
and of a run and have to be defined individualy. Sufides gives less problems but
peaks do go wider to the end of a run.
When you build your combustion tubes yourself you have to use ultra pure
chemicals, especially impurities in the copper causes tailing of the sticky
sulfurdioxide. Best is to buy the prepacked tubes from CE.
I run samples of about 50ug of sulfur and get 2V peaks of mass 64 in the beginning
of a run. This is of course dependent of gas flow and other things. 900mV for a
100 ugS seems a bit low to me.

take care,
Arnold

Shapna Mazumder wrote:

> Hello All who do sulphur analysis,
> I have been running sulphur analysis on feathers using Bovine Liver as working
> standard on a Costech EA- Delta V Advantage. After running two dozen
> samples on a new combustion column and water trap the sulphur peak is
> broadening, which seems to be effecting the d34S by about 1 per mil
> (although the combustion hasn't been effected).  Reintegrating the
> chromatogram helps if I do them individually.  Two questions, what could be
> contributing to the peak broadening and in terms of source sensitivity what
> should I be getting on mass 64 for a sample containing 100ug S, presently I
> am getting ~900 mV for 100ug S.  Any help will be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks.
> Regards,
> Shapna