Direct Mercury Analysis Saves You Time
The DMA-80 thermally decomposes the sample and determines the total amount of mercury in less than five minutes.
It is true that the actual analysis time with traditional methods of mercury detection is only 1–2 min, but the bottleneck in the process is the sample preparation step. First, samples must be digested. For digestion of soil samples, EPA 3052 (closed vessel microwave digestion) requires 20–30 minutes. EPA 3050B (hot plate digestion) requires even longer: a total of 3–4 hours of heating and cooling and then heating again.
Once the sample been completely digested, it must be treated with various chemicals, which may take another hour. Therefore the total sample prep is already anywhere from an hour and thirty minutes up to 5 hours for soil, or even longer for more difficult samples such as coal. Cleaning of the reaction containers can take another hour.
So, it takes between 2 and 72 hours—depending on the sample matrix and method of digestion—to digest the sample, another hour to chemically treat the digestate, and then only a few minutes to analyze.
The DMA-80 does everything in 5 minutes. Raw sample materials are introduced into the sample boat . . . and 5 minutes later the result is displayed in the DMA software, and the sample boat is ready to be reused.
Mercury: See an overview, or view the DMA-80 product details, the fundamentals of mercury analysis, or see our resource library of methods, application notes, and articles.
General: Go to the Milestone front page, or send us an inquiry.