Mercury poisoning test gets it wrong for palladium catalysts
By 
Katrina Krämer2018-11-06T14:30:00
The 100-year-old mercury drop test to distinguishing between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalyst is not as reliable as chemists thought
A century-old method to distinguish between homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts – known as the mercury drop test – is wrong in many cases, Russian researchers have concluded. In reactions thought to be impossible, mercury gives false positives for many palladium catalysts. First used in 1919, the mercury drop test checks if a metal catalyst is sensitive to mercury poisoning – the catalyst is deactivated as an inactive compound forms.