Mercury determination up to the ultra trace level

At a glance:

• Highly automated – in combination with an autosampler and easy to operate, it meets all expected requirements from a modern routine analysis system
• Fast – thanks to time-controlled flow injection with or without autosampler plus the unique FBR routine (Fast Baseline Return)
• Safe – through the use of a bubble sensor, a specially optimized drying membrane, and cascade enrichment
• Efficient – due to automated, intelligent gas-liquid control, ensuring minimum
• Best detection limits – through simple or cascade enrichment
• Compliant – to EN/DIN and EPA regulations

Optimum enrichment

To adapt the mercur to varied analytical tasks, you can choose between three enrichment modes: no enrichment, simple enrichment, and cascade enrichment.
The cascade enrichment feature, compliant to EPA 1631 requirements, comprises two coupled gold collectors, which ensures clean separation of the matrix and prevents quenching effects – thus providing maximum dependability even with complex samples. Enrichment times can be varied to match the sample matrix or the expected mercury concentration range.

Clever dosage

Two pump systems separately meter sample and reagents and transport them to the reactor.
Sample solution and acid are fed to the reactor in segments, controlled by a set of valves. The reductant is fed directly into the reactor. There the two solutions meet at an acute angle.
The resulting chemical reaction immediately releases atomic mercury vapor. This mode of separating sample and acid ensures fast cleaning of the pump tubing after aspiration of the sample solution. This helps to save time and reduces the amount of reagents needed. It additionally prevents contamination in case of large concentration gradients within a sequence of measurements.

Efficient protection

The mercur displays its true strength when handling complicated samples such as foaming solutions. These occur frequently in everyday laboratory practice and involve a high risk of contamination and carry-over. The mercur features an important detail, the bubble sensor, which avoids unnecessary cleaning.

If a liquid threatens to spill into the system, this sensor causes the valves to close, and the liquid is automatically conducted to the waste container.

Positioned between gas-liquid separator and drying membrane, it protects the gold collector and measurement cell against contamination.

Intelligent control

To ensure a smooth reaction process in any of the various operating modes, the mercur features an intelligent gas/liquid control system. Thanks to the instrument’s complex valve groups, tubing paths have been minimized to prevent contamination, and to keep carry-over as low as possible.

The system-flushing feature can be run in an automatic mode, operating whenever the calibrated concentration range is exceeded, or as a user-defined option. This guarantees a successful analysis in cases of strong variations of the mercury content within a sequence of measurements. These features are needed in order to take advantage of the wide linear range of the atomic fluorescence spectrometer in everyday routine analysis.

An expanding range of applications

Mercury analysis is employed in a wide range of fields. Due to the harmful influence on the human organism, mercury is a focus of close attention: In medical disciplines such as occupational medicine and dentistry, as well as in drinking water and food control.
The mercur has been designed for dependable mercury analysis in all these fields: