Comparative study of magnesium nitrate, palladium nitrate and reduced palladium for the direct determination of mercury in sea water by electrothermal atomization atomic absorption spectrometry

A comparative study of different chemical modifiers in graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry for the direct determination of mercury in sea water samples, in synthetic sea water sample of high (72.8 parts per thousand) and low 34.2 parts per thousand) salinity and in aqueous solutions, was carried out. The use of reduced palladium produces better results. The mixture of palladium nitrate and ascorbic acid, gives the best limit of detection (1.9 mu g l(-1)). The use of reduced palladium and magnesium nitrate produced excellent recoveries (close to 100%) in the whole salinity range for all mercury concentration tested. The use of palladium nitrate alone or combined with magnesium nitrate gave good recoveries with respect to a real sea water sample for low salinities. The interference from the major components of sea water were completely removed by using reduced palladium and magnesium nitrate modifiers. Thus, a single calibration curve with synthetic sea water may be applied to the analysis of sea water samples of widely differing salinities.