Speciation analysis of mercury in seafood by using high-performance liquid chromatography on-line coupled with cold-vapor atomic fluorescence spectrometry via a post column microwave digestion Original Research Article

An automatic system, based on the on-line coupling of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation, post column microwave digestion, and cold-vapor atomic fluorescence spectrometry (CVAFS) detection, was proposed for the speciation analysis of four mercury compounds. Post column microwave digestion, in the presence of potassium persulfate (in HCl), was applied in the system to improve the conversion efficiency of three organic mercury compounds into inorganic mercury. Parameters influencing the on-line digestion efficiency and the separation effect were optimized. To avoid water vapor and methanol entering into the atomic fluorescence detector, ice–water mixture bath was used to cool the microwave-digested sample solution. Four mercury species including inorganic mercury chloride (MC), methylmercury chloride (MMC), ethylmercury chloride (EMC) and phenylmercury chloride (PMC) were baseline separated within 13 min by using RP C18 column with a mobile phase of 50% (v/v) methanol containing 10 mmol l−1 tetrabutyl ammonium bromide and 0.1 mol l−1 sodium chloride pumped at 1.2 ml min−1. Seafood samples, composed of three gastropod species and two bivalve species from Yantai port, China, have been analyzed by the proposed method. Dogfish muscle (DORM-2) was analyzed to verify the accuracy of the method and the result was in good agreement with the certified value.