The basic principle of commonly used digestion methods

including dissolving method

fusing method

and burning method

for detecting elemnts contained in coal and coal ash

as well as their application situation in coal inspection have been reviewed.The progress of studying adoptation of microwave degestion technology to detect elements contained in coal has been presented.Compared with the conventional dissolving method

fusing method

and burning method

the time used for digesting samples by using microwave digestion technology has been greatly shortened

and many samples can be handled at a time

making the efficiency of digestion to be enhanced by a big margin.