MERCURY STABILITY IN THE ENVIRONMENT

Abstract

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAAs) require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine whether the presence of mercury and 188 other trace substances, referred to as air toxics or hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), in the stack emissions from fossil fuel-fired electric utility power plants poses an unacceptable public health risk (1). The EPA's conclusions and recommendations were presented in two reports: Mercury Study Report to Congress and Study of Hazardous Air Pollutant Emissions from Electric Utility Steam Generating Units-Final Report to Congress. The first congressional report addressed both human health and the environmental effects of anthropogenic mercury emissions, while the second report addressed the risk to public health posed by emissions of HAPs from steam electricity-generating units. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences is also required by the CAAAs to investigate mercury and determine a safe threshold level of exposure. Recently the National Academy of Sciences has also been commissioned by Congress to complete a report, based the available scientific evidence, regarding safe threshold levels of mercury exposure. Although the EPA reports did not state that mercury controls on coal-fired electric power stations should be required given the current state of the art, they did indicatemore » that EPA views mercury as a potential threat to human health. It is likely that major sources of mercury emissions, including fossil-fired combustion systems, will be controlled at some point. In fact, municipal waste combustion units are already regulated. In anticipation of additional control measures, much research has been done (and continues) regarding the development of control technologies for mercury emitted from stationary sources to the atmosphere. Most approaches taken to date involve sorbent injection technologies or improve upon removal of mercury using existing technologies such as flue gas desulfurization scrubbers, fabric filters, and electrostatic precipitators. Depending on the fly ash chemistry and the form of mercury present in the flue gas, some of these existing technologies can be effective at capturing vapor-phase mercury from the flue gas stream. Although much research has been done on enhancing the removal of mercury from flue gas streams, little research has focused on what happens to the mercury when it is captured and converted and/or transferred to a solid or aqueous solution. The stability (or mobility) of mercury in this final process is critical and leads to the questions, What impact will the increased concentration of mercury have on utilization, disposal, and reuse? and Is the mercury removed from the flue gas really removed from the environment or rereleased at a later point? To help answer these questions, the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) as part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Base Cooperative Agreement did a series of experiments using thermal desorption and leaching techniques. This report presents the results from these tests.« less