W6 PM Environmental Changes in Response to China's Economic Expansion
Wednesday, 16 November 2005: 1:50 PM - 5:30 PM in 324-326

(FEN-1117-513535) Anthropogenic mercury emissions in China: what do we know?

Feng, X¹, ¹ State Key Laboratory of Environ. Geochem. IGCAS, Guiyang, Guizhou, China

ABSTRACT- With rapid economic development in China, environmental pollution from industrialization processes is huge concern, although the Chinese government has made tremendous efforts to prevent emitting pollutants to the environment. China is now regarded as the largest mercury emission country, but the actually mercury pollution status to the environment remains unknown to the rest of the world. An anthropogenic mercury inventory from different sources in China in 1995 was estimated according to recent domestic reports and literature data. About 402 metric tons of total mercury were emitted into the atmosphere from China in 1995. The largest atmospheric emission source in China is coal combustion, including coal fired power plants and domestic uses, which accounts for 36.1% of total anthropogenic emissions. Meanwhile it is also pointed out that there are large uncertainties on the estimation because of lacking of field measurement data. More work is urgently needed to quantify not only total mercury emission, but also the speciation information related to mercury emission from industry activities in China.

Key words: Mercury, Speciation, coal combustion