Preliminary Study on Detection Sediment Contamination in Soil Affected by the Indian Ocean Giant Tsunami 2004 in Aceh, Indonesia Using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)

This work is intended to asses the capability of LIBS for the detection of the tsunami sediment contamination in soil. LIBS apparatus used in this work consist of a laser system and an optical multichannel analyzer (OMA) system. The soil sample was collected from in Banda Aceh City, Aceh, Indonesia, the most affected region by the giant Indian Ocean tsunami 2004. The laser beam was focused onto surface of the soil pellet using a focusing lens to produce luminous plasma. The experiment was conducted under air as surrounding gas at 1 atmosphere. The emission spectral lines from the plasma were detected by the OMA system. It was found that metal including heavy metals can surely be detected, thus implying the potent of LIBS technique as a fast screening tools of tsunami sediment contamination.