Abstract Title: | Mercury measurement for increasingly stringent emissions controls |
Session Choice: | Monitoring Techniques: Trace species |
Presenter Name: | Mr Michael Hayes |
Company/Organisation: | The Linde Group |
Country: | United States |
Abstract Information :
A chemical element, mercury is found both naturally and as an introduced contaminant in the
environment, mainly from high-temperature industrial processes such as alkali and metal
processing, incineration of coal and oil in electric power stations, foundries, waste combustion
and oil and gas processing.
Mercury rapidly moved up the pollution control agenda in the European Union (EU), the USA
and Asia prior to the legally binding UNEP global treaty on mercury, the Minamata Convention,
adopted in 2013 and signed by 128 countries. The objective of the Minamata Convention is to
protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury
and mercury compounds. In late 2011, the US EPA finalised the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards
(MATS), the first national Clean Air standards to reduce emissions of mercury and other toxic air
pollutants from new and existing coal and oil-fired power plants. In the EU, the Community Strategy
concerning mercury was adopted in 2005 and reviewed in 2010. It focuses on mercury emissions
to air, the banning of mercury exportation (including certain mercury compounds) and enforcing
restrictions on products containing mercury and industrial processes using mercury. In regard to
industrial emissions of mercury, the EU Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) addresses the issue
via the Reference documents on the Best Available Techniques (BREF).
As legislation and action plans grow in number and stringency, the importance of monitoring
and quantifying emission pollutants in an accurate and transparent manner are becoming
priorities. Typical analytical instruments in this application include Atomic Absorption
Spectrometers (AAS) and Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) mass spectrometers.
The Linde Group was the first company to offer to the market gaseous mercury calibration
standards for the monitoring and detection of emissions. A comparison is made between these
calibration gas standards and other methods of calibrating analytical instruments.