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Updated: Jul 10, 2026

Determination of Inorganic Arsenic in a Wide Range of Food Matrices using Hydride Generation - Atomic Absorption Spectrometry.
Published on: September 1, 2017
Determination of mercury in ash and soil samples by oxygen flask combustion method--cold vapor atomic fluorescence
Wenhua Geng1, Tsunenori Nakajima, Hirokazu Takanashi
1Department of Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kagoshima University, 1-21-40 Korimoto, Kagoshima 890-0065, Japan.
Abstract:
A simple method was developed for the determination of mercury (Hg) in coal fly ash (CFA), waste incineration ash (WIA), and soil by use of oxygen flask combustion (OFC) followed by cold vapor atomic fluorescence spectrometry (CVAFS). A KMnO4 solution was used as an absorbent in the OFC method, and the sample containing a combustion agent and an ash or soil sample was combusted by the OFC method. By use of Hg-free graphite as the combustion agent, the determination of Hg in ash and soil was successfully carried out; the Hg-free graphite was prepared by use of a mild pyrolysis procedure at 500 degrees C. For six certified reference materials (three CFA samples and three soil samples), the values of Hg obtained by this method were in good agreement with the certified or reference values. In addition, real samples including nine CFAs collected from some coal-fired power plants, five WIAs collected from waste incineration plants, and two soils were analyzed by the present method, and the data were compared to those from microwave-acid digestion (MW-AD) method.
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