Pre-treatment

Prior to the AMS analysis carbon built into the studied material has to be extracted. This process of purification is called pretreatment and involves physical (e.g. sieving) and chemical separation (e.g. cellulose or collagen extraction) of suitable fraction/compound of the sample. Microscopic investigations allow detection of impurities (e.g. roots) and FT-IR spectroscopy (Fourier Transform-Infra Red) reveals contaminations with conservation material (e.g. PVA, PEG and similar). Standard procedures such as acid-base-acid treatment and solvents washes in a Soxhlet apparatus are applied according to the detected contamination.