Johannes Pfingsten
VDZ Service
- Conference: Global Mercury Monitoring conference
- Presentation: SRM vs Sorbent trap
- Presentation Time: Day2 15:50
Johannes Pfingsten is a Chemist working for VDZ in Duesseldorf, Germany. He is responsible for the trace element analysis, including mercury, for example in emission samples. Beside the supervision of emission projects, one aspect of his work is also the validation of new methods most recently of CEN/TS 17286 for the accreditation. Before this he was active in research of leaching behaviour of concretes as well as in the field of quantification of concrete constituents in hardened concrete.
Up to now EN 13211 "Air quality - Stationary source emissions - Manual method of determination of the concentration of total mercury" is the standard reference method for emission control of mercury. It is used for random or repeated sampling but also for the calibration (QAL2) or annual surveillance tests (AST) of continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS) for mercury. The standard published in 2001 was validated for the monitoring of limit values in the order of 0,03 to 0,05 mg/m³ and also mentions a detection limit of about 0,0026 mg/m³. The high environmental relevance of mercury, its toxicity to humans and the environment, and its worldwide distribution via various environmental pathways have led numerous countries to commit to reducing mercury emissions (Minamata Convention). In some countries the limit values are already lowered to the order of magnitude of the detection limit. In this context, new procedures such as CEN/TS 17286 (sorbent traps) are closely followed. The talk gives a brief comparison of both methods and of first results of comparative measurments.