On which analyzer do you make the measurements? What temperature do you use to separate an individual compounds/fractions?
Hi Dominika,
You could have a look at a reference which I thnik may be useful.
de Percin, P.R., 1995. Application of thermal desorption technologies to hazardous
waste sites. J. Hazard. Mater. 40, 203–209.
Best regards,
Doreen
Dear Doreen,
Thank You for answer. This publication was very interesting but concerns the application of thermal desorption technology in waste management. I am more interested in analytical techniques for mercury speciation in environmental samples. For example, whether such speciation can be done on one sample or is necessary to perform several studies on several (homogeneous) samples at various temperatures.
Hi, I can recommend you an one purpose atomic absorption spectrometer AMA254. It is helpful and very easy instrument. However, the methylmercury should be extracted in an extra step by an acid or other solvent. I'm afraid that in another case you need to use some separation method like LC or GC.
Hi Pavel,
Thank You for answer. We already have AMA254 and we want to buy DMA-80. So we have equipment to do Hg speciation. But we do not have experience in this technique. So maybe You know people who use a thermo-desorption technique for mercury speciation? I'd like to ask some detailed questions about it.
Dominika, in my opinion you can not do the speciation of inorganic and organic mercury directly by AMA or similar technique. The principle of the determination is that you measure the difference between the total Hg (in your sample) and MeHg extracted from your sample. I do not know if it does not makes some misunderstanding.
For the inorganic speciation of Hg by TD-AAS I have found this publication: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00171644 but I have no experience with such analysis.
If you need some details about the Hg speciation analysis by the way I mentioned (AMA), it is no problem.
Pavel,
My intention is not to measure organic Hg in soil. I want to separate labile Hg (including dissolved Hg and Hg bound to humic acids) and stable Hg (HgS), with the use of pyrolysis method: analyser with precisely control of combustion temperature of the sample (TD-AAS). And I wonder how to do it.
Well, so we do not understand each other, sorry :) Try this publication: http://cbks.cz/SbornikPolana07/pdf/Hojdova_et_al.pdf
Dominika, this was a contribution to conference only. Full papers are attached.
Do not hesitate to contact me if you need further assistance.
Article Mercury Distribution and Speciation in Soils Affected by His...
Article Distribution and Speciation of Mercury in Mine Waste Dumps
Hi Tomas,
Thank you for publications. I wonder why you did not do Hg speciation at AMA? I found the publication, where the authors used the AMA-254 for for mercury speciation in soils and sediments.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230832043_Development_and_validation_of_a_simple_thermo-desorption_technique_for_mercury_speciation_in_soils_and_sediments
Article Development and validation of a simple thermo-desorption tec...
Yeah - nice recent paper by Reis et al.
Your question - as always there are advantages and disadvanteges for both ways. The advantages of using OES device is for example the possibility to look at other analytes during the thermodesorption (i.e. sulfur) to identify thermal digestion of HgS, secondly the whole experiment for a single samples takes you 5-10 minutes (using AMA - I guess it will be several mutiple experiments each at 3-5minutes).
But the disadvantage of OES is the non-oxidating (argon) atmosphere analysis of organic rich samples becomes a problem due to memory effects and production of tar like substances during sample heating.
So we just simply went the way of OES... but definitely the other way using oxygen atmosphere combustion has its perspectives.
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