I have been asked to quantify metallic impurities in a sample of 'used' mercury. Thinking about digesting and analyzing on ICP-MS. Number of questions....
(a) What digestion methods to use?
(b) Will dissolving in acid and leaving Hg in the sample contaminate the ICP-MS?
(c) What methods can be used to extract the dissolved Hg out leaving the impuritiy metals behind.
If any of you have done such an analysis, certainly like to get your input, before I do something foolish.
I think anodic stripping is useful in this case, by putting the mercury drop at the end of an inert electrode (Pt as example) and choosing the suitable conditions of pH and supporting for the expected metal ions being in the mercury sample.
I personally haven't done such an analysis, but I see no reason why not simply digest in nitric acid, heat (microwave or digestion block), dilute and read by ICP-MS, no contamination will occur because you dilute the samples a lot to avoid this problem, such as 100 x. (I routinely do this for biological samples). Sorry about c), that I have no idea :)
Dear Analyst,
There could be many many analytical methods to analyze for contaminats in used mercury metal. Some may be easy, others may be cumbersome and impracticable. But my idea is quite bit different. Since main part of the sample could be mercury metal itself (95-100), then take a large portion ( 5-10 g) of waste mercury and distill mercury very carefully. At the end extract the residue with a mixture of HNO+HCL, digest and make up the volume. Only condition is the the desired elements are not volatile and may escape with mercury distillation. Think about it. Best wishes - Tahir zaidi
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