Speciation of volatile mercury species present in digester and deposit gases

✍ Scribed by Jonas Sommar; Xinbin Feng; Oliver Lindqvist

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 54 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0268-2605
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0739(199906)13:6<441::aid-aoc859>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

Volatile mercury compounds have been speciated in gases evolved from fermentation of sewage sludge as well as municipal waste. The species were trapped by sequential sampling, using a noble-metal trap in series with an activated-carbon trap. Thermally desorbed Hg 0 and (CH 3 ) 2 Hg were separated by GC at 70 °C and detected by cold vapour atomic fluorescence spectroscopy after thermal reduction. The amounts of mercury detected in the sewage gas correspond to concentrations in the range 50-110 ng m À3 for both species whereas the deposit gases were found to contain only elemental mercury. Monomethylmercury species could not be positively identified in any of the gas samples.