- P-ISSN 1225-0163
- E-ISSN 2288-8985
The electrolyte cathode atomic glow discharge (ELCAD) is a new plasma source for direct determination of trace heavy metals in drinking and waste water. ELCAD has been successfully developed for on-line monitoring of heavy metals, however, shows difficulty to measure mercury. In this study, ELCAD has been modified to apply the atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) for the direct determination of trace elements of mercury in flowing water.The fundamental characteristics of this new types of plasma source have been investigated and found that the pH of the solution, discharge voltage, and current are most important factors.The absorbance of 1.0 ppm Hg standard solution increases as pH of the solution increases from pH 1.0 to 3.0.However, % RSD of the absorbance also increases as the pH of solution increasesdue to plasma unstability.The detection limits of the standard solution of pH 1.5 and pH 3.0 are about 40 ppb and 10 ppb level, respectively.