The Great Lakes receive quantifiable inputs of atmospheric mercury from many regional anthropogenic sources, and controls are now being considered. Emissions from combustion sources have been characterized, but those from non-combustion sources are poorly quantified. Potential fugitive emission sources being measured in FuME and its related projects include chloralkali factories, production of precision measurement instruments including mercury, electrical component manufacturers, steel mills, metal scrap yards, oil refineries, mercury and mercury-bearing product recyclers such as those for fluorescent lamps, and municipal and chemical waste handling and landfill facilities. The overall objective of this study is to assess speciated mercury emissions from non-combustion sources in the Great Lakes Airshed. This will include measurements of fugitive air emissions, release of organo-mercurials, presence of airborne reactive gaseous mercury (RGM), and determination of surface emissions from potentially contaminated on-site soils. New real-time sampling methodology for airborne Hg° (Figure 1) make such field measurements feasible, and has important advantages over routine gold trap sampling devices because of its portability, fast response, and wide dynamic range. This device utilizes Zeeman corrected atomic absorption spectroscopy (ZCAAS), combined with a folded 10-m path cell to produce Hg data on a 1 Hz time scale. The hand-held battery operated device fills the gap very well between the highly sensitive, but less portable and slower Tekran (with an LD of 0.2 ng/m3) and the hand-held Jerome thin-film sensor which is often used in industrial settings (with an LD closer to 1000 ng/m3). Field work in FuME and its related projects began at a Chlor-alkali plant in Jan.-Feb., 2000, and continued at urban/industrial sites in the Minneapolis, MN area in October 2000 (Figure 1). Flux measurements were made at a refinery and a refuse-derived fuel facility, and surveys of downwind atmospheric mercury concentrations were conducted at scrapyards, an arc furnace, a fluorescent bulb recycling plant, a medical waste sterilizer, a residential and commercial waste transfer station, and a construction debris landfill (Figure 2). A second field investigation will be conducted in the Detroit, MI area in May, 2001 in collaboration with the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality. Future monitoring in the Great Lakes Region in 2002-2003 will draw upon the findings of FuME to measure fluxes from previously poorly characterized sources. Results are being prepared for journal publication. _________________*Sponsored by the US EPA, Region V, Great Lakes Program Office and EPA Air Toxics Program and a collaboration with the Ed Swain at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the University of Minnesota, Joy Taylor and Randy Chase, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and Nick Bloom and Eric Prestbo, Frontier Geosciences. References: Southworth, G. R., S. E. Lindberg, H. Zhang, J. S. Kinsey, F. Anscombe, and F. Schaedlich. Fugitive mercury emissions from a chlor-alkali facility: sources and fluxes to the atmosphere, Atmos. Envir. (in review). Lindberg, S.E., and J. Price. 1999. Measurements of the airborne emission of mercury from municipal landfill operations: A short-term study in Florida. J. Air and Waste Man. Assoc. 49:174-185. |
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