Comparison of methods of analysis for total mercury in coal and coal residues

Conference · Thu Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1999

OSTI ID:20082348

Riley, J T; Li, D; Xu, C; Pan, W P; Janke, L

Recent concerns about the many sources of mercury emissions and the total amount of mercury species being released into the environment has caused the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to initiate plans for monitoring these emissions. To deal with this situation ASTM Committee D.05 on Coal and Coke formed a Task Group to study new methods of preparing samples for mercury analysis and to evaluate methods used for mercury analysis. For over 30 years the industry standard method for mercury analysis has been the cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometric technique (CVAAS). Recent developments in improving this technique have focused on procedures for concentrating mercury in the analyte or on materials to improve detection. Automated instruments with gold amalgamation for concentrating mercury prior to detection with atomic absorption methods appear to have many advantages over conventional CVAAS. A study comparing the traditional bomb decomposition of solid samples followed by CVAAS with the analysis of solid samples in an automatic mercury analyzer (AMA) was conducted. The results of this work in relation to the preliminary results from a 36-laboratory round robin for the analysis of mercury and to the development of new ASTM standard methods for mercury analysis will be discussed in this paper.

• Research Organization: Western Kentucky Univ., Bowling Green, KY (US)
• OSTI ID: 20082348
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
ABSORPTION SPECTROSCOPY
COAL
INTERLABORATORY COMPARISONS
MERCURY
QUANTITATIVE CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
SAMPLE PREPARATION