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EVALUATION OF IODINE BASED IMPINGER SOLUTIONS FOR THE EFFICIENT CAPTURE OF HG USING DIRECT INJECTION NEBULIZATION INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA MASS SPECTROMETRY (DIN-ICP/MS) ANALYSIS
Citation:
Hedrick, E J., H. Minges, T. G. Lee, AND P. Biswas. EVALUATION OF IODINE BASED IMPINGER SOLUTIONS FOR THE EFFICIENT CAPTURE OF HG USING DIRECT INJECTION NEBULIZATION INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA MASS SPECTROMETRY (DIN-ICP/MS) ANALYSIS. Presented at Air & Waste Management Association National Conference, Salt Lake City, UT, June 18-22, 2000.
Description:
Currently there are no EPA reference sampling methods that have been promulgated for measuring stack emissions of Hg from coal combustion sources, however, EPA Method 29 is most commonly applied. The draft ASTM Ontario Hydro Method for measuring oxidized, elemental, particulate-bound and total Hg and the draft Tris-Buffer method have undergone evaluation and are favored over EPA Method 29 for accurate speciation of elemental and oxidized Hg. All of these methods employ acidic permanganate impingers to capture elemental Hg and use cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry for Hg analysis (CVAA). Elemental Hg is oxidized in the permanganate solution and reduced back to elemental Hg for CVAA analysis. In this work inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP/MS) using direct injection nebulization (DIN) was used to evaluate novel impinger solution compositions capable of capturing elemental Hg. The impinger solution compositions were selected to be amenable to ICP/MS analysis and results were compared to the Ontario Hydro Method. DIN-ICP/MS proved to be very specific for Hg, as sensitive as CVAA and has the potential benefit of allowing direct multi-element analysis of peroxide and iodine based impinger solutions. Hydriodic acid (HI) and acidcified potassium iodide were most efficident at capturing elemental Hg and were amenable to ICP/MS analysis.