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The environmental monitoring system is of great significance in marine scientific research and exploration. However, battery-operated sensors in such a system limit its working time and make maintenance difficult. Harvesting water wave energy to power these sensors becomes a promising way to overcome challenges. Herein, a pendulum type hybrid generator to scavenge wave energy and power the hydrophone is presented. The proposed pendulum structure can harvest random water wave energy from arbitrary directions sensitively. The combination of a freely rolling mode triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and a magnetic sphere based electromagnetic generator (EMG) provides complementary advantages and harvests wave energy in a wide frequency range. The hybrid generator is demonstrated to drive 177 LEDs and power an electronic device. At a wave driving frequency of 1.4 Hz, the output power of the EMG and TENG is 6.7 mW and 8.01 µW, respectively. A capacitor can be charged to 26 V by the hybridized generator within 200 seconds at the frequency of 1.8 Hz. The new type of hydrophone-based system realizes sustainable wireless sensing of acoustic signals and positioning information and has important application value for long-term synchronous ocean monitoring.

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A rapid analysis of methylmercury (MetHg) in fish samples is reported by using stannous chloride reduction and direct sampling electrothermal vaporization atomic absorption spectrometry (ETV-AAS). After the simple reduction reaction using 10% SnCl2 (w:v), Hg 2+ was changed to volatile Hg 0 and vaporized from the analyte extraction solution. Then, the residual Hg species was determined with the direct sampling Hg analyzer without requiring chromatographic separation. Since the dominating organic Hg in fish tissues is mostly MetHg (methylmercury), the measured alkyl Hg residue can therefore be considered to be MetHg + for rapid screening. The LOD (detection limit) of the proposed method reached 0.6 µg/kg of MetHg with 0.4% -6.3% RSD (relative standard deviation). No significant difference (P > 0.05) was found between the proposed method and the liquid chromatographic atomic fluorescence spectrometry (LC-AFS) method or certified values of reference materials, which proves the accuracy of the MetHg analysis in real marine and freshwater fish samples. The total testing time for one aliquot, including instrumental analysis (~3 min) and sample preparation, can be performed within 100 min. Considering the possible EtHg (ethylmercury) existence in most fish samples, it is suggested that this proposed method be used for future rapid screening analysis, which no doubt also offers considerable applicable potential for fast mercury speciation analysis to protect food safety.

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