Simple methodology for methylmercury and inorganic mercury determinations by hi...

• Author(s): Ramalhosa, Elsa ; Río-Segade, Susana ; Pereira, Eduarda ; Vale, Carlos ; Armando, Duarte
• Date: 2001
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/3946
• Origin: Biblioteca Digital do IPB
• Subject(s): Methylmercury; Cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectromety; Liquid chromatography; UV radiation; Simplex optimisation
• Document Type: Article
• Language: English

Description

http://apps.isiknowledge.com/full_record.do?product=UA&search_mode=Refine&qid=8&SID=R1gA2bji7@iPIC2ene@&page=1&doc=1&colname=WOS An analytical methodology was developed to separate and quantify methylmercury (MeHg) and inorganic mercury by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectrometry (CV-AFS). The use of UV oxidation of the organic forms of mercury, the tin(II) chloride reduction in acidic medium of mercury and the introduction of a water vapour trap based on H2SO4/CaCl2 resulted in a low detection limit (DL) (10 +/- 2 pg, mean value +/- S.D.). The apparatus was operationally optimised through the modified simplex method leading to an increase of the signal by a factor of 2. The method performance has been tested by determining the MeHg concentration in a sediment certified reference material (CRM) and the results were statistically indistinguishable from the certificate value (alpha = 0.05) both for the mean value and S.D.