Development of an on-line monitor for mercury

At the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant, a weapons production facility operated by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc. for the Department of Energy, mercury contamination problems indicated the need for a real-time automatic analyzer for mercury in effluent waters. The project for designing, and building such an instrument was taken on by the Instrument Development Group of the Y-12 Plant Laboratory.

The instrument is capable of real-time on-line analysis of mercury in effluent water without the continuous need of an analyst. Other capabilities include remote reporting in case of an over limit condition, self-diagnostics of various instrument failures, and automatic self calibration.

The mercury monitor consists of a small, inexpensive single board computer which controls a medium complexity wet chemistry procedure for mercury analysis. The computer is programmed to implement instrument control, data acquisition, data manipulation, and reporting functions.