Well-balanced crops require well-balanced soil. While carbon may be the most essential element for organic life, the right ratio of nitrogen and sulfur in the soil along with the carbon can really influence the speed and strength of plant development and growth. With a macro combustion carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur determinator such as LECO's CNS928, those ratios can be discovered easily through fast and precise analysis.
There are countless fertilizers that can be applied to change the ratio of elements in soil, but without knowing the baseline for your soil, you have no practical way of knowing what it needs. LECO's CNS928 can take some of the uncertainty out of soil management.
While helium remains the inert gas of choice for elemental analysis, supply is limited, driving cost up. The CNS928 is designed to support the use of either helium or argon as a carrier gas. The thermal conductivity difference between argon and nitrogen is not as great as the thermal conductivity difference between helium and nitrogen, so the detector is inherently less sensitive when using argon for nitrogen determination, but the CNS928 does offer the option of using a larger 10 cm3 aliquot loop. The 10 cm3 aliquot loop helps to overcome the lower sensitivity of argon carrier gas by optimizing the system for the lowest nitrogen range and provides the best precision.
To see how the CNS928 handles carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur determination with various combinations of carrier gases and aliquot loop sizes, read the app note.
