Atmospheric emissions of mercury from Australian point sources |
| |
| Institution: | 1. School of Mining Engineering, UNSW Australia, NSW 2052, Australia;2. Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre, UNSW Australia, NSW 2052, Australia;1. Urban Environment and Ecology Research Center, South China Institute of Environmental Sciences (SCIES), Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), Guangzhou 510655, China;2. Key Laboratory of Ecology and Environmental Science in Guangdong Higher Education, College of Life Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China;3. Coal Mining Safety and Coal Pollution Control Research Center, College of Environment and Safety, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology (TYUST), Taiyuan 030024, China;1. State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering, Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China;2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China;3. State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Northwest Institute of Eco-environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Lanzhou 730000, China;1. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China;2. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, Beijing 100084, China;3. Collaborative Innovation Center for Regional Environmental Quality, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China;1. Department of Environmental Sciences, Jozef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia;2. Marine Biology Station, National Institute of Biology, Fornace 41, 6330 Piran, Slovenia;3. Laboratorio de Análisis por Activación Neutrónica, Centro Atómico Bariloche, Av. Bustillo km 9.5, 8400 Bariloche, Argentina;4. Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, United States |
| |
| Abstract: | The UN Global Mercury Assessment (GMA) estimates that atmospheric emissions of mercury from Australian stationary combustion sources were 97.0 tonnes for the year of 1995. This is more than 90% of the estimated emissions from stationary combustion for the whole of North America, and seems abnormally high for a country with a population of around 20 million, in spite of the fact that most of Australia's stationary energy supply is provided by coal. It is also significantly larger than previous estimates of mercury emissions from Australian sources. New estimates of Australian mercury emissions from stationary energy sources, based on both a top down and bottom up approach, are presented. These estimates can be reconciled for black coal fired power stations, but suggest that the bottom up approach (the Australian National Pollutant Inventory) significantly under-estimates emissions from brown coal fired plant, if mercury capture efficiencies in these plants are low, as observed for lignite-fired plant. The major uncertainties in these estimates are the coal mercury content in coals burnt in Australian power stations, and the mercury capture efficiency in particulate control devices used at these stations. Based on these estimates, Australian emissions of mercury from stationary energy are currently 2–8 tonnes/year, significantly lower than the GMA estimate. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
