The Canadian Electricity Association believed that the first priority in managing mercury was to improve the inventory of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants across the country. Companies had already put significant effort into achieving this objective. To augment this ongoing work and to support discussion of effective mercury management and standards achievability, CEA members committed to a program of mercury measurement and analysis. A mutually agreed upon set of guidelines was developed for an intensive program to sample and analyse the mercury in coal, residue and flue gas at the generation facilities over a two year period.
The program was designed with quality-assurance and information value as the principal drivers. Sample collection, handling, and storage followed standard procedures, where practicable, as agreed among the companies and the respective provincial governments. Quality-assured analyses was conducted on mercury and other key substances associated with mercury.
The purpose of this program was to collect data over a 2 year period in an attempt to reduce some of the uncertainty around our ability to measure mercury concentrations in coal, residue and stack gases. This longer term approach was necessary to ensure that the data was adequately reviewed, and that the samples were sufficient in number to provide robust analytical results. Use of subsets of the data for analysis could yield highly uncertain results not representative of long-term system performance.
The following document was created for the purposes of providing guidance to companies in the development of a Sampling and Analysis Implementation Plan. Implementation plans will vary from company to company in terms of methodologies and timelines to account for variances in circumstances. The company plans have been approved by their respective Provincial Environment agencies.