You are here:
THE DETERMINATION OF MERCURY SPECIES AND MULTIPLE METALS IN COAL COMBUSTION EMISSIONS USING IODINE-BASED IMPINGERS AND DIRECT INJECTION NEBULIZATION - INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA MASS SPECTROMETRY ANALYSIS
Citation:
Hedrick, E J., P. Biswas, T. G. Lee, AND Y. Zhuang. THE DETERMINATION OF MERCURY SPECIES AND MULTIPLE METALS IN COAL COMBUSTION EMISSIONS USING IODINE-BASED IMPINGERS AND DIRECT INJECTION NEBULIZATION - INDUCTIVELY COUPLED PLASMA MASS SPECTROMETRY ANALYSIS. Presented at 94th Annual Air and Waste Management Association, Orlando, FL, June 24-28, 2001.
Description:
Mercury (Hg) emissions from coal utilities are difficult to control. Hg eludes capture by most air pollution control devices (APCDs). To determine the gaseous Hg species in stack gases, U.S. EPA Method 5 type sampling is used. In this type of sampling a hole is drilled into the stack wall and a volume of gas is isokenetically drawn through a heated probe, through a filter to remove particulate, and finally through a series of gas-scrubbing solutions designed to selectively capture the gaseous Hg species of interest. Gaseous speciation is achieved by selective, sequential capture in the impinger solutions. Analysis of Hg on the filter and in the impinger solutions is done by oxidation of all Hg species followed by cold vapor atomic absorption spectormetry (CVAA) analysis. A drawback to this type of analysis scheme is that there are no reference methods capable of both Hg speciation and multiple metals analysis since the solutions typically used for Hg capture are not amenable to low level metals techniques like ICP-MS. This can double the cost of study designed to gather Hg and multiple metals data since two separate sampling and analysis methods must be used. In previous research we developed an impinger sampling train for Hg speciation using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP/MS) with direct injection nebulization (DIN) with the potential for performing multiple metals determinations on the same solutions. In the current work we (1) demonstrate the Hg speciation sampling and analysis method using a bench scale coal combustor and compare the results to the Ontario Hydro Method, (2) demonstrate the capability of performing low-level Hg determination in addition to low-level analysis of Pb, Cd, Ba, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Se, V and Zn, and (3) demonstate the proposed methodology in real world stack sampling of a coal utility.