Ozone treatment for mercury determination in white wines

A method was developed for the generation of mercury vapour by means of cold-vapour flow-injection atomic absorption spectrometry (FI-CV-AAS) from white wine samples after ozonation as sample pre-treatment. Two different reactors designs for sample ozonation were developed and investigated. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification were, respectively, 0.5 and 1.7 μg l⁻¹, and the relative standard deviation (n=10) was 2% for a concentration of 50 μg l⁻¹ and 7% for a concentration of 5 μg l⁻¹. The pre-treatment with ozone has allowed to reduce drastically the amount of chemical reagents (e.g. carrier agent and reducing agent) used in the FI-CV-AAS system. The mercury content of wine samples was also determined by FI-CV-AAS after pre-concentration in the presence of HNO₃ and H₂O₂. In general, there was no significant difference among data obtained from both methodologies, but pre-treatment with ozone is much faster.