Determination of mercury in soil, bottom sediments, and geological materials

INTRODUCTION

Analysis of soils and bottom sediments for mercury content is one of the most common analyses in the monitoring of environmental pollution. Background mercury concentrations in these objects are 10–100 μg/kg and in the polluted areas they exceed 10,000 μg/kg.

MEASUREMENT METHOD

This method is based on the atomization of mercury contained in a sample in a PYRO-915+ attachment and subsequent mercury determination by atomic absorption spectrometry employed in a mercury analyzer RA-915M. The mercury AAS analyzer RA-915M with the Zeeman background correction equipped with a PYRO-915+ thermal decomposition attachment provides determination of mercury in soil and other similar samples without sample preparation and mercury accumulation on a sorbent. Mercury content in the sample is determined from the integrated analytical signal with due account of the preset calibration coefficient (from any reference mercury sample).

The mercury content is measured by an RA-915M mercury analyzer within 2 minutes.