Since the University of Oulu bought last year a LA-ICP-MS to expand their ways of research concerning corrosion and agglomeration problems in fluidized bed boilers. The objective of this thesis was to give a review about LA-ICP-MS, what are its capabilities, how to calibrate, what are the start up procedures and what kind of measurements can we make? The thesis will discus every step of the LA-ICP-MS; ablation, ionisation and detection applied on the LA-ICP-MS of the University of Oulu. After the literature part we try to improve our measurement strategies with the LAICP-MS, in order to get better results out of it. I would like to thank the University of Oulu for giving me the opportunity to write my thesis here. While writing my thesis I had a lot of help from Risto Laitinen, Minna Tiainen, Harri Kola, Heikki Ollila, Mirja Piispanen and Susanna Arvilommi, I would like to thank them for that. Thanks go also to Andoni Michelena and Bert De Smet for reading my thesis through. Finally I would like to thank my parents for their financial and mental support. <...>
