Therefore, we designed a series of experiments to allow evaluation of the memory effect in the analysis of gaseous Hg. Through a modification of experimental design used in our previous study [14], we attempted to learn more about the short- and long-term memory effect for CVAAS analysis. In this study, we additionally aimed to characterize memory effect through the extension of storage intervals and with different initial loading amounts of Hg. By comparing the properties of the memory effect between the present and previous study, we aim to learn more about the fundamental characteristics of the effect. 2. Experimental Assembles2.1. Basic Setups In our study, we conducted four different types of experiment to understand the sensitivities of the memory effect to variations in storage time and initial mass of Hg loaded onto the tube. To this end, a total of 12 gold-coated sand tubes were used, and the ID for each individual is given in Table 1. Gold-coated sand (part number: 03115), used for making adsorption tubes (Figure 1), was brought from Brooks Rand Labs. Following the procedures described in the operational manual of the mercury analyzer with CVAAS detector (WA-4, NIC, Japan), adsorption tubes were prepared as follows. Glass tubes (160mm in length and 6mm in diameter (inner)) were used with a crimp in the middle of the tube to hold the quartz wool and gold coated sand in place. Then, hollow tubes were filled with gold-coated sand and quartz wool (Figure 1). After making these adsorption tubes, they were tested by injecting a known amount of gaseous mercury standard. Following these tests, the trap was then desorbed to its blank level [16]. Figure 1Schematic diagram of instrumental settings and composition of adsorption tube used for the analysis of elemental Hg in our study.Table 1Basic information concerning the adsorption tubes used in our study.The mercury detector was calibrated against known concentrations of mercury gaseous standard before each experiment. In our experiment, we injected between 5 and 50ng of mercury from a Standard Gas Box (MB-1, NIC, Japan) into the injection port of analyzer (Figure 1). Sample adsorption tubes were placed in the outside port of the Hg analyzer and heated to 600��C for 5 minutes, desorbing the mercury from trap and into the CVAAS detector (Figure 1). Good linearity was observed (calibration coefficient of determination (r2 = 0.99)) for each calibration and consecutive experiment (Table 1). 2.2. Experimental DesignIn this study, four different types of experiments were conducted to precisely evaluate blank memory behaviour of amalgamation tube method on the basis of CVAAS detection. As this study aims to describe reproducibility of the sampling method, all the basic conditions of two different studies are compared.