A prototype device for the quantitative collection of airborne mercury in particulate, elemental and combined forms, respectively, was designed, fabricated and tested. The device used a Hi-Vol Sampler into which two canisters containing absorbers for elemental and combined mercury were added in a collection plenum below the glass fiber filter. Particulate collection was tested with mercuric oxide and sulfide on the glass fiber filter; elemental mercury vapor was collected on a silver-alumina absorbent; dimethyl mercury was collected on the activated charcoal phase. The absorbents were performance tested. An analytical procedure for each of the three separately collected forms of mercury has been developed and tested. In principle, it involved desorbing the collected sample into iodine monochloride solution, reduction onto gold wire, and heating to desorb the concentrated mercury into a flameless atomic absorption spectrophotometer.

Submitted by GEOMET under contract 68-02-0578, ROAP no. 26AEK, Task no. 36.