TY - JOUR A1 - Vogel, Christian A1 - Krüger, Oliver A1 - Herzel, Hannes A1 - Amidani, L. A1 - Adam, Christian T1 - Chemical state of mercury and selenium in sewage sludge ash based P-fertilizers N2 - Phosphorus-fertilizers from secondary resources such as sewage sludge ash (SSA) will become more important in the future as they could substitute conventional fertilizers based on the nonrenewable resource phosphate rock. Thermochemical approaches were developed which remove heavy metals from SSA prior to its fertilizer application on farmlands. We analyzed the chemical state of mercury and selenium in SSA before and after thermochemical treatment under different conditions for P-fertilizer production by X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy. In some incineration plants the mercury loaded carbon adsorber from off-gas cleaning was collected together with the SSA for waste disposal. SSAs from those plants contained mercury mainly bound to carbon/organic material. The other SSAs contained inorganic mercury compounds which are most probably stabilized in the SSA matrix and were thus not evaporated during incineration. During thermochemical treatment, carbon-bound mercury was removed quantitatively. In contrast, a certain immobile fraction of inorganic mercury compounds remained in thermochemically treated SSA, which were not clearly identified. HgSe might be one of the inorganic compounds, which is supported by results of Se K-edge XANES spectroscopy. Furthermore, the chemical state of selenium in the SSAs was very sensitive to the conditions of the thermochemical treatment. KW - X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy KW - Phosphorus recovery KW - Sewage sludge ash KW - Mercury KW - Selenium KW - Mercury selenide (HgSe) PY - 2016 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2016.03.079 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2016.03.079 VL - 313 SP - 179 EP - 184 PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam, Netherlands AN - OPUS4-35718 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -