New continuous mercury monitoring system

Paul Boughton

Gasmet, the manufacturer of advanced gas analysis systems, is to launch a new continuous mercury monitoring system (CMM).

Legislation to limit mercury emissions from combustion processes is progressing quickly in many parts of the world, but process managers have already started to implement mercury monitoring programs.
 
The CVAF spectrometer has an integrated high temperature converter to effectively transform mercury compounds to atomic mercury without any chemicals or vulnerable catalyst materials.

The close coupling of converter and fluorescence cell also ensures that Mercury does not recombine to, for example, Mercury Chloride between the converter and the Mercury Analyser.

Sample gas dilution with synthetic nitrogen generated within the CMM system is an effective tool to promote sample transportation whilst decreasing the loss of Hg0 fluorescence signal to interactions with O2, CO2, and H2O.

The fluorescence cell is specially designed to eliminate stray reflections and background light so that even with sample dilution the CMM system is capable of monitoring low levels of mercury as required in the forthcoming US Clean Air Mercury Rule.

The system is controlled through a touch screen control panel, which is integrated with the analyser and calibrator inside an air-conditioned cabinet, and calibration is maintained with regular automatic zero and span calibrations using Hg0 and HgCl2 calibration gases generated within the CMM system - typically every 24 hours. Periodic linearity checks with atomic mercury or mercury chloride are also possible.

For more information, visit www.gasmet.fi

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