Evaluation of different extraction procedures for determination of organic Mercury species in petroleum by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with cold vapor atomic fluorescence spectrometry

An extraction procedure for extracting organic mercury species including methylmercury (MeHg) and ethylmercury (EtHg) from petroleum samples was developed. Three extraction methods (shaking, ultrasonic and microwave assisted extraction) using different extraction solvents (TMAH, KOH/CH3OH, HCl and acidic CuSO4/KBr) were investigated by comparing the extraction efficiency of the organic mercury species. Microwave assisted extraction at 60 W for 5 min using TMAH (tetramethylammonium hydroxide, 25%, m/v) provided the most satisfactory extraction efficiency for MeHg and EtHg in petroleum at 86.7%±3.4% and 70.6%±5.9%, respectively. Speciation analysis of mercury was done by on-line coupling of high performance liquid chromatography with cold vapor generation atomic fluorescence spectrometry (HPLC-CV-AFS). The proposed method was successfully applied to analyze several crude oil and light oil samples. The concentrations of MeHg ranged from under detection limit to 0.515 ng g−1, whereas EtHg was not detected in the samples. This method can be a very useful tool in evaluating the risk of mercury emissions from petroleum.