Evaluation of the Memory Effect on Gold-Coated Silica Adsorption Tubes Used for the Analysis of Gaseous Mercury by Cold Vapor Atomic Absorption Spectrometry

Figure 4

Results of intermediate-term Exp. B (Exp. no. 3). Amount of excess mercury (ng) from the second heating cycle (HC-2) after 7 days and third heating cycle (HC-3) after 14 days was measured: results compared as a function of the mass of mercury originally dosed onto the adsorption tubes in day 1 (𝑥-axis). Each measurement point (HC-2 and HC-3) for initial injection of 5, 10, 30, and 50 ng of mercury is average of triplicate tube analyses, and a total of 12 different tubes were used for this investigation. Error bars represent standard deviation of triplicate analyses. HC-2 (B) represents observation from the second heating cycle in our previous investigation [14].