Field sampling, preconcentration and determination of mercury species in river waters

Speciation analysis of mercury in seawater from the lagoon of Venice by on-line pre-concentration HPLC–ICP-MS

“…However, to successfully separate mercury species by HPLC, ion pairing agents such as l-cysteine [13,14] are required, which when coupled with vapour generation and ICP-MS gives detection limits of between 0.03 and 0.11 ng mL −1 . HPLC-ICP-MS with off-line pre-concentration [15] reached detection limits of 5.2 ng L −1 for Hg 2+ and 5.6 ng L −1 for CH 3 Hg, recently microbore HPLC-ICP-MS has been used for the speciation analysis of mercury [16], the use of a 1.0 mm i.d. analytical column operating at a flow rate of 70 L min −1 significantly reduced the amount of solvent reaching the plasma leading to interesting sensitivity gains.…”

Determination of methylmercury and inorganic mercury in water samples by slurry sampling cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry in a flow injection system after preconcentration on silica C18 modified

“…A diversity of combinations between solid sorbent and complexing agent have been employed for preconcentration of both inorganic mercury and methylmercury: (i) on-line formation of mercury diethyldithiocarbamates on silica C 18 and quantitative elution of the retained chelates with ethanol [2,3]; (ii) chelation with dithiophosphoric acid diacyl ester (DDTP), adsorption of the corresponding chelates on a C 18 column and elution with ethanol [4]; (iii) sorption of the mercury complexes formed with ammonium pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (APDC) on silica C 18 , which were after eluted with a methanol-acetonitrile-water mixture [5].…”

“…Several complexing solid sorbents have been applied to online preconcentration of mercury species from natural water samples using different detection techniques [2,3,6,7]. Thus, sulphydryl cotton permitted to retain methylmercury, ethylmercury and inorganic mercury, which were then eluted with 3 mol dm −3 hydrochloric acid [6,7].…”

Mercury(ii) and methylmercury determination in water by liquid chromatography hyphenated to cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectrometry after online short-column preconcentration

“…Most importantly, its stronger tolerance to complex matrices endows it with better capability of online applications. 9 In solid phase extraction as a preconcentration step, C18 cartridges have been the most widely used stationary phase, both directly and aer derivatisation [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] with a wide range of complexing agents, most of which contain sulphur, such as 2-mercaptoalcohols, dithiocarbamates, dithizones, triazenes, and even bacteria. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] A wide variety of eluting agents have also been used to desorb mercury species from the stationary phase, such as acidic solutions, thiourea solutions, mobile phases with organic-modiers, aqueous solutions with a reagent containing sulphur, and even a mixture of these kinds of solutions with an organic solvent, among others.…”