This paper reports studies on metals in the liquid by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy in order to detection of heavy metals in industrial wastewater. A measuring device by LIBS has been established which including the Nd:YAG laser, Echelle spectrograph, intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) and liquid jet. The characteristic spectral lines of twelve metals in actual industrial wastewater from a certain nonferrous metals company were analyzed using LIBS. The calibration curves of the metals in liquid were acquired by the experiment and the linear correlation coefficients were high. The detection limits of metals obtained from the liquid were low, especially for the Ca, Cu, K, Mg, Mn and Na. The results show that the measuring system can be applied in the on-line, rapid detection of heavy metals in industrial wastewater, and it has wide range of applications.
