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Asked by neck520towy to rosiewatts, DrBecks, lisaallen, anirudhsharma, andreeaclaudiatoma on 1 May 2025.
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Rebecca von Hellfeld answered on 1 May 2025:
Hey, awesome question! I am super lucky in that I have an instrument that measures mercury in samples without me having to do anything to the samples first. It essentially burns the samples in an enclosed chamber, and compressed air moves the fumes through the equipment, guiding it past a sensor that detects how much mercury is in the fumes. So all I need is my nifty little instrument and a connection to the compressed air system of the university.
Sounds easy, right? Well, for the last month, the compressed air has been turning itself off randomly, and it has caused us a lot of head aches!I also tried extracting different contaminants from the samples, for which I had to handle a lot of nasty chemicals like toluene – a strong solvent – and methylmercury – a really dangerous neurotoxin! For that, I had to sign a lot of forms saying that I know what risks I am putting myself under and that I would not be a danger to anyone else.
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Comments
Enrico commented on :
I use pure hydrogen, oxygen, and argon. These are needed to explore reactions in acids using precious metals like platinum and iridium. Platinum is used to make water from oxygen and to make protons from hydrogen in a fuel cell. Iridium is used to make oxygen from water in an electrolyser which also has platinum that can be used for making hydrogen from protons.
The argon is useful to make an inert atmosphere to investigate the materials in these reactions.
Sometimes the acid is a liquid like HClO4, but this is diluted in water for a few reasons including because the pure form can be explosive. Another acid is a solid acid which is related to teflon type materials but has sulfuric acid covalently bonded to it and this is used in real-world fuel cells and electrolysers.