Determination of chlorine in organic compounds containing mercury

The standard procedure for the determination of chlorine in organic compounds of mercury consists in decomposition of the material, separation of mercury and determination of chlorine as chloride. Decomposition of the sample could be achieved by wet mineralization [1,2], ignition in a stream of oxygen [3—7] or nitrogen [8], ignition in a flask with oxygen [9], etc. [10, 11]. Chlorine and mercury could be separated by distillation [1], electrolytic separation of mercury [2] or reduction with zinc [9, 12]. Chlorine may be separated also on dry way by absorption in sodium carbonate [3, 4], silver wool [5] or in the decomposition product of permanganate [6—8]. Chlorine is determined mostly mercurimetrically [3, 4, 6—8] or argentometrically [9, 10]. We wish to report a direct determination of chlorine in the ignited sample after masking the interfering mercury with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid.