Purification of cadmium up to 5N+ by vacuum distillation

Cadmium was refined by vacuum distillation, a technique suitable for low boiling and melting point materials, to remove the heavy and low vapour pressure impurities at ppm level. The detailed analysis of the purified Cd as well as raw Cd was done by ICP-OES techniques for 27 impurity elements. Purification was carried out in an efficient high-yield vacuum distillation system designed and fabricated for purifying 3N+ purity indigenous cadmium to 5N+ (99.999%). Analysis confirmed the reduction of total impurity content from 134 ppm (3N7) for raw Cd to 3 ppm (5N7) upon vacuum distilled Cd. The present study shows that the analysis of impurities such as Fe, Mg and Ca are contributed from environmental effect, whereas impurities such as Pb, Bi, Ag, Ni, Cu, Zn and Tl require adaptation of elemental analysing technique to counter dilution effect. The Hg trace analysis can however be carried out by hydride generation techniques.