title: Estimating mercury emissions from a zinc smelter in relation to China's mercury control policies.
abstract: Mercury concentrations of flue gas at inlet/outlet of the flue gas cleaning, electrostatic demister, reclaiming tower, acid plant, and mercury contents in zinc concentrate and by-products were measured in a hydrometallurgical zinc smelter. The removal efficiency of flue gas cleaning, electrostatic demister, mercury reclaiming and acid plant was about 17.4%, 30.3%, 87.9% and 97.4% respectively. Flue gas cleaning and electrostatic demister captured 11.7% and 25.3% of the mercury in the zinc concentrate, respectively. The mercury reclaiming tower captured 58.3% of the mercury in the zinc concentrate. About 4.2% of the mercury in the zinc concentrate was captured by the acid plant. Consequently, only 0.8% of the mercury in the zinc concentrate was emitted to the atmosphere. The atmospheric mercury emission factor was 0.5 g t(-1) of zinc produced for the tested smelter, indicating that this process offers the potential to effectively reduce mercury emissions from zinc smelting.
authors: Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, and State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors: S X
authors: SX
authors: Wang
authors: J X
authors: JX
authors: Song
authors: G H
authors: GH
authors: Li
authors: Y
authors: Y
authors: Wu
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Zhang
authors: Q
authors: Q
authors: Wan
authors: D G
authors: DG
authors: Streets
authors: Conrad K
authors: CK
authors: Chin
authors: J M
authors: JM
authors: Hao
mesh_terms: D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D001272:Atmosphere / Q000737:chemistry; D002681:China; D058735:Environmental Policy; D008628:Mercury / Q000032:analysis*; D008669:Metallurgy; D015032:Zinc
chemical_list: D000393:Air Pollutants; D008628:Mercury; D015032:Zinc