Development of a Novel Mercury Cartridge for Mercury Analysis

Mercury cartridges, which area key component of semicontinuous online mercury monitors, capture low-concentration mercury from the effluent streams of coal-fired power plants and subsequently release highly concentrated pulses of mercury for spectroscopic analysis. The most common sorbent used ill mercury cartridges is gold-coated silica beads (Au/SiO2), Which form it reversible amalgam with elemental mercury. Ag/MC is a robust composite mercury sorbent, consisting of silver nanoparticles supported on the surface of natural chabazite, which can efficiently capture and release mercury from it real flue gas environment, making the material it potential alternative to Au/SiO2 in mercury preconcentration cartridges. The performance of Au/SiO2- and Ag/MC-based mercury cartridges in capturing low-level mercury in Ar-, SO2-, and NO-containing gas streams was investigated systematically. Both SO, and NO were determined to be harmful to the performance of an Au/SiO2 mercury cartridge. NO had limited impact oil the performance of Ag/MC, but the presence of SO2 led to reduced mercury recovery from the Ag/MC mercury cartridge. Soda lime was proven to be in effective, NO-tolerant SO2 scrubber. Based oil these results, it novel SO2- and NO-tolerant mercury cartridge was designed and fabricated using soda lime its it disposable SO2 scrubber and Ag/MC its the reversible mercury sorbent .