Thermal Decomposition AA

The direct determination of mercury in solids and liquids is achieved by subjection to controlled heating in an oxygenated decomposition furnace to liberate mercury in situ within the instrument.  The sample is dried before being thermally and chemically decomposed within the decomposition furnace.  The liberated mercury vapour is trapped on a gold amalgam before detection by atomic absorption spectrometry.
This method provides rapid mercury analysis in a variety of solid sample matrices with little to no sample pre-treatment.  Integration of thermal decomposition and atomic absorption detection affords a reduction in the total analysis time of most samples to less than five minutes.  Moreover, available instrumentation for this technique is remarkably stable and immune from matrix interferences.  As a result, a variety of samples can be analyzed for mercury from a single stored calibration curve.  This procedure has the additional advantage of eliminating the production of hazardous chemical waste.

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