Particulate mercury

Keeler GJ, Glinsom G, Pirrone N. 1995. Particulate mercury in the atmosphere its significance, transport, transformation and sources. Water Air Soil Pollut 80 159-168. 

Lu JY, Schroeder WH, Berg T, Munthe J, Schneeberger D, Schaedlich F. 1998. A device for sampling and determination of total particulate mercury in ambient air. Anal Chem 70 2403-2408. 

Lu JY, Schroeder WH. 1999. Sampling and determination of particulate mercury in ambient air a review. Water Air Soil Pollut 112 279-295. 

Hurley JP, Watras CJ, Bloom NS. 1994. Distribution and flux of particulate mercury in four stratified seepage lakes. In Watras CJ, and Huckabee J, editors. Mercury as a global pollutant integration and synthesis. Chelsea (MI) Lewis, p. 69-82. 

MSO is unsuited for treating materials with high inert content, such as asbestos, concrete, soils, and rubble. There is concern over emissions from MSO relating to particulate mercury content and radioactivity. MSO is inappropriate for wastes with high tritium levels. MSO pilot programs have encountered problems with carbon monoxide (CO) emissions. The corrosion of reactor materials by molten salt has remained a concern for the long-term operability of the system. The viscosity and volatility of the melt have to be controlled. There have been problems with material from the melt plugging air exhaust and feeder systems. 

A series of mercury mass balances was obtained at a coal-fired power plant by comparing the volatile and particulate mercury in the stack gas stream to the mercury initially in the coal, corrected for the mercury adsorbed and retained by the various ashes. These data were used to determine the fate of the mercury in the combustion process and to check the accuracy of the volatile mercury sampling procedure (gold amalgamation). The bottom ash had the lowest mercury concentration of the ash samples collected, and the mercury concentration increased as one proceeded through the ash collection system from the initial mechanical ash to the electrostatic ash. The mercury recovered in the various ashes represented about 10% of the total mercury introduced in the raw coal. 

The analysis of the particulate mercury by direct analysis if the cold vapor instead of collection on Ag-Chromsorb P should be explored. Although Ag-Chromsorb P can be prepared according to the experimental procedure, this support is not commercially available. There may be industrial hygiene laboratories where as MAS-50 is not available for these laboratories, a method by... 

Elemental Mercury Reactive Mercury Particulate Mercury Cinnabar... 

Coquery M., Cossa D., and Martin J.-M. (1995) The distribution of dissolved and particulate mercury in 3 Siberian estuaries and adjacent arctic coastal waters. Water Air Soil Pollut. 80(1-4), 653-664. 

Bullock (1997) used the Regional Lagrangian Model of Air Pollution (RELMAP) to simulate the emission, transport, chemical transformation, and wet and dry deposition of elemental mercury gas, divalent mercury gas, and particulate mercury from various point and area source types to develop an atmospheric mercury emissions inventory by anthropogenic source type. The results of the RELMAP model are shown in Table 5-3. On a percentage basis, various combustion processes (medical waste incinerators, municipal waste incinerators, electric utility power production [fossil fuel burning] and nonutility power and heat generation) account for 83% of all anthropogenic emissions in the United States. Overall, of the emissions produced, 41% were associated with elemental mercury vapor (Hg°), 41% with the mercuric form (Hg2+), and 18% was mercury associated with particulates. 

The natural global bio-geochemical cycling of mercury is characterized by degassing of the element from soils and surface waters, followed by atmospheric transport, deposition of mercury back to land and surface waters, and sorption of the compound to soil or sediment particulates. Mercury deposited on land and open water is in part revolatilized back into the atmosphere. This emission, deposition, and revolatilization creates difficulties in tracing the movement of mercury to its sources (WHO 1990). Particulate-bound mercury can be converted to insoluble mercury sulfide and precipitated or bioconverted into more volatile or soluble forms that re-enter the atmosphere or are bioaccumulated in aquatic and terrestrial food chains (EPA 1984b). 

Keeler et al. (1995) reported that particulate mercury may contribute a significant portion of the deposition of mercury to natural waters. Mercury can be associated with large particles (>2.5 m) at concentrations similar to vapor phase mercury. Particulate phase mercury levels in rural areas of the Great Lakes and Vermont ranged from 1 to 86 pg/m3, whereas particulate mercury levels in urban and industrial areas were in the range of 15-1,200 pg/m3. Sweet and Vermette (1993) sampled airborne inhalable particulate matter in urban areas (southeast Chicago and East St. Louis) and at a rural site. 

Keeler G, Glinsom G, Pirrone N. 1995. Particulate mercury in the atmosphere Its significance, transport transformation and sources. In Porcella DB, Wheatley B, eds. Mercury as a global pollutant. Proceedings of the Third International Conference Whistler, British Columbia, July 10-14, 1994. Boston, MA Kluwer Academic Publishers, 159-168. 

Gaseous Mercury Con- centration, ng/m Particulate Mercury Concentration ... 

For the determination of particulate mercury, add-cleaned Teflon and quartz fibre filters, the latter combusted at 500 °C (Coquery and Cossa, 1995), are recommended. A significant fraction of the mercury in seawater is present in colloidal forms and separated with the aid of add-cleaned ultrafiltration cartridges (Stordal et oL, 19%). 

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States and the Baltimore metropolitan area, one of the heavily industrialized areas on the east coast, is located on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay has a large surface-to-volume ratio (mean depth is 7 m) and it is therefore particularly vulnerable to the influence of atmospheric deposition (5). Previous studies have demonstrated that Baltimore s urban atmosphere is an important source of PAHs and PCBs to the Chesapeake Bay (77, 18). Previous studies around the Chesapeake Bay have quantified the concentrations of inorganic and organic contaminants in wet and dry deposition at rural sites in the watershed (3-5, 20, 23). Additionally, a paper discussing the impact of urban-derived gaseous and particulate mercury appears as part of this book (27). In this chapter the focus is on metals in wet deposition. 

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