Laboratory Investigation of Hg Release from Flue Gas Desulfurization

Apr 26, 2010 - Approximately 30 million tons of FGD materials from wet flue gas scrubber systems were produced in 2008 in the United States with more ...
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Environ. Sci. Technol. 2010, 44, 4012–4018

Laboratory Investigation of Hg Release from Flue Gas Desulfurization Products M A E G U S T I N * ,† A N D K E N L A D W I G ‡ Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, MS 370, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada 89557, and EPRI, 3420 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, California 94304

Received December 3, 2009. Revised manuscript received April 2, 2010. Accepted April 8, 2010.

Flue gas desulfurization (FGD) is a process applied to remove acid deposition precursors from the coal combustion air stream. This process also removes mercury (Hg) resulting in accumulation of this element in FGD produced solids. This project investigated Hg release from FGD materials to the air and water. Hg concentrations in the synthetic leaching precipitation procedure extracts, designed to simulate rainwater pH conditions, were in general