- Title
- Atmospheric mercury in the Latrobe Valley, Australia : case study June 2013
- Creator
- Schofield, Robyn; Utembe, Steven; Gionfriddo, Caitlin; Tate, Michael; Keywood, Melita
- Date
- 2021
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/176835
- Identifier
- vital:15204
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00072
- Identifier
- ISBN:2325-1026 (ISSN)
- Abstract
- Gaseous elemental mercury observations were conducted at Churchill, Victoria, in Australia from April to July, 2013, using a Tekran 2537 analyzer. A strong diurnal variation with daytime average values of 1.2–1.3 ng m–3 and nighttime average values of 1.6–1.8 ng m–3 was observed. These values are significantly higher than the Southern Hemisphere average of 0.85–1.05 ng m–3. Churchill is in the Latrobe Valley, approximately 150 km East of Melbourne, where approximately 80% of Victoria’s electricity is generated from low-rank brown coal from four major power stations: Loy Yang A, Loy Yang B, Hazelwood, and Yallourn. These aging generators do not have any sulfur, nitrogen oxide, or mercury air pollution controls. Mercury emitted in the 2015–2016 year in the Latrobe Valley is estimated to have had an externalized health cost of $AUD88 million. Air pollution mercury simulations were conducted using the Weather Research and Forecast model with Chemistry at 3 × 3 km resolution. Electrical power generation emissions were added using mercury emissions created from the National Energy Market’s 5-min energy distribution data. The strong diurnal cycle in the observed mercury was well simulated (R2 ¼ .49 and P value ¼ 0.00) when soil mercury emissions arising from several years of wet and dry deposition in a radius around the power generators was included in the model, as has been observed around aging lignite coal power generators elsewhere. These results indicate that long-term air and soil sampling in power generation regions, even after the closure of coal fired power stations, will have important implications to understanding the airborne mercury emissions sources. Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Melita Keywood” is provided in this record**
- Publisher
- University of California Press
- Relation
- Elementa Vol. 9, no. 1 (2021), p.
- Rights
- All metadata describing materials held in, or linked to, the repository is freely available under a CC0 licence
- Rights
- http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Rights
- Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Rights
- Open Access
- Subject
- 01 Mathematical Sciences; 02 Physical Sciences; Air mercury; Coal power generation; Gaseous elemental mercury; Soil
- Full Text
- Reviewed
- Funder
- Australian Antarctic Science Grant (4032) Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes CE170100023 and Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project DP160101598. The observations were supported by the Melbourne Energy Institute and CSIRO (EPA mercury grant).
- Hits: 1579
- Visitors: 1572
- Downloads: 86
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | Published version | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |