Determination of mercury in mercury-containing wastes - Waste and Recycling
INTRODUCTION
Mercury is widely used in chemical industry, electronic s, electric engineering, instrument making, medicine, pesticide and explosives production, etc. A number of techniques and equipment are developed for reclaiming mercury-containing waste, such as soil, sludge, stillage botto ms, slime sediments, fluorescent lamps, mercury-containing batteries.
One of the most im portant problems arising in rec...
One of the most im portant problems arising in reclaiming, certification, storage and burial of waste is monitoring of residual mercury content. This problem can be solved by using a RA-915+/915M mercury analyzer with RP-91 and PYRO-915+ attachments.
MEASURING METHOD
The measuring method is based on the thermal atomization of mercury from a waste sample using a PYRO-915+ attachment and subsequent mercury determination by atomic absorption spectrometry employed in RA-915M/RA-915+ mercury analyzer. For measuring high concentration of mercury “cold vapor” technique is used. This method is based on the reduction of mercury cations to the atomic state by a stannou s chloride reducing solution in a reaction vessel of an RP-91 attachment and then measuring concentration of mercury atoms in the analytical cell of a mercury analyzer RA-915M/RA-915+. It takes 30-50 min to prepare a sample for the 'cold vapor' procedure, whereas the mercury content is measured by an RA-915+/915M mercury analyzer within 2 minutes.