Direct Determination of Trace Mercury in Ore Samples by Mercury Analyzer

Precise and rapid determination of total mercury in ore samples has been performed using a direct mercury analyzer without any wet chemical sample pretreatment. Once a weighed sample portion was introduced into the instrument, analysis can be completed in less than six minutes. The detection limit of the method was 0.60 ng/g for mercury and the recoveries of this method were 90.0％~109.0％ with the precision of 0.95%~4.74% RSD (n=8). The analytical results of mercury for six kinds of ore reference materials were in good agreement with the certified values. The method also has been applied to the determination of trace mercury in ore samples and the results are in agreement with those by other conventional methods. In comparison with the current national standard method, the proposed method provides the advantages of less interference from matrix effect, more efficient, simple operation and suitable for routine inspection.