Substoichiometric determination of mercury with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide

A radiometric method based on substoichiometric isotope dilution analysis has been developed for the determination of mercury using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as the substoichiometric reagent. The method is based on the extraction of mercury as an ionassociation complex of tetraiodomercurate(II) ion with a substoichiometric amount of CTAB in benzene. The calibration graph was found to be linear in the range 0-10 μg Hg (II) in the aqueous phase of 10 ml volume. A detection limit of 0.06 μg x ml-1 could be achieved by the proposed method. The relative standard deviation of the method was found to be 3.0% and the method has been successfully applied to study the determination of mercury in various synthetic mixtures. (author)