EVOLUTION, USING INSTRUMENTAL NEUTRON-ACTIVATION ANALYSIS, OF THE ELEMENT COMPOSITION OF COAL AND OIL-SHALE FUEL AT CONSECUTIVE STAGES OF ITS COMBUSTION
Pa. Vaganov et al., EVOLUTION, USING INSTRUMENTAL NEUTRON-ACTIVATION ANALYSIS, OF THE ELEMENT COMPOSITION OF COAL AND OIL-SHALE FUEL AT CONSECUTIVE STAGES OF ITS COMBUSTION, Analyst, 120(5), 1995, pp. 1453-1456
Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was used to measure th
e concentrations of 40 elements in coal and oil shale and in products
of their combustion at power plants: slag, ash from different aggregat
es and fly ash, Particular attention was paid to the fine size fractio
ns of fly ash because micrometre and sub-micrometre particles are resp
onsible for the long-range transport of air contaminants. The determin
ation limits of all the elements considered were lower than their mean
abundances in the Earth's crust, Concentrations of heavy metals, incl
uding radioactive U and Th, and also Cr, Co, Ni, Zn, Mo, Cd, Hg, etc.,
and toxic non-metals (As, Se, Pr, Sb) were determined in the initial
fuel and in its combustion products at two power plants, The first, in
the city of Chengdu (China), was coal-fired; the second, in Estonia,
was oil shale-fired, There were many similar features in the changes i
n the trace element composition of the combustion products at the two
types of power station, Most of the elements enriched in fly ash were
volatile, The behaviour of these elements, as revealed by INAA, corres
ponds to the model of volatilization and condensation processes occurr
ing during combustion of solid fuel.