Automated Analysis of Metals Including Hg by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry and Consideration of Additives in Pretreatment Using Continuous Flow Analysis Method

Abstract

We investigated the optimization of the automated analysis of 12 metals (B, Al, Cr, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, As, Se, Cd, Hg, and Pb) and the effect of additives using an automated acid decomposition system based on the continuous flow analysis (CFA) method. We investigated the effect of additives, including HCl, Na-containing reagents, and various oxidizing reagents, on the recovery of Hg in HNO₃. Adding HCl and NaClO had a remarkable effect and improved the recovery from 70% to 100%. On the basis of the conditions obtained in this study, it was possible to automate the measurement process through pretreatment and the simultaneous inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) analysis of metal elements containing Hg in various samples even if the samples contain interference substances.