Abstract View
Effects of Inlet Temperature and Particle Transmission on Automated Mercury Analysis
Adriana Mustata, ELISABETH GALARNEAU, Geoff Stupple, Alexandra Steffen, Environment and Climate Change Canada
Abstract Number: 615
Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract
Atmospheric mercury is found predominantly in its gaseous elemental state, but small fractions are also present as oxidized gaseous and particulate forms. Previous research has suggested that inlet heating on automated analysers affects the phase distribution of measured mercury. Such effects could produce substantial errors when sampling at cold temperatures such as those found in the Arctic atmosphere or in winter at more temperate locations. In order to investigate these aspects of automated mercury analysis, laboratory experiments were conducted by dispersing a reference material and delivering it to an automated analyser whose temperature settings were varied over a range that bracketed their default values. Complementary experiments were also conducted in the high Arctic (83°N at Alert, Nunavut, Canada) using side-by-side instruments operated at different temperature settings. Results demonstrate that temperature affects measured mercury speciation and that particle transmission is an additional consideration when interpreting mercury measurements using automated analysers.