ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-10-8197-2010 Release of mercury halides from KCl denuders in the presence of ozone Lyman S. N. 1 Jaffe D. A. 1 Gustin M. S. 2 University of Washington-Bothell, Bothell, Washington, USA University of Nevada-Reno, Reno, Nevada, USA 02 09 2010 10 17 8197 8204 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/8197/2010/acp-10-8197-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/8197/2010/acp-10-8197-2010.pdf

KCl-coated denuders have become a standard method for measurement of gaseous oxidized mercury, but their performance has not been exhaustively evaluated, especially in field conditions. In this study, KCl-coated and uncoated quartz denuders loaded with HgCl<sub>2</sub> and HgBr<sub>2</sub> lost 29–55% of these compounds, apparently as elemental mercury, when exposed to ozone (range of 6–100 ppb tested). This effect was also observed for denuders loaded with gaseous oxidized mercury at a field site in Nevada (3–37% of oxidized mercury lost). In addition, collection efficiency decreased by 12–30% for denuders exposed to 50 ppb ozone during collection of HgCl<sub>2</sub>. While data presented were obtained from laboratory tests and as such do not exactly simulate field sampling conditions, these results indicate that the KCl denuder oxidized mercury collection method may not be as robust as previously thought. This work highlights needs for further testing of this method, clear identification of gaseous oxidized mercury compounds in the atmosphere, and development of field calibration methods for these compounds.

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