Automated dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction coupled to high performance liquid chromatography - cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectroscopy for the determination of mercury species in natural water samples.

An automated, home-constructed, and low cost dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) device that directly coupled to a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) - cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectroscopy (CVAFS) system was designed and developed for the determination of trace concentrations of methylmercury (MeHg), ethylmercury (EtHg) and inorganic mercury (Hg) in natural waters. With a simple, miniaturized and efficient automated DLLME system, nanogram amounts of these mercury species were extracted from natural water samples and injected into a hyphenated HPLC-CVAFS for quantification. The complete analytical procedure, including chelation, extraction, phase separation, collection and injection of the extracts, as well as HPLC-CVAFS quantification, was automated.