Title
Screening Coarse Airborne Dust for Lead-Rich Phase Occurrence during Characterisation of Particle Mineralogy, Chemistry and Provenance: Application to Deposits in the Vicinity of an Integrated Steelworks
Author
Small, J.
van Hoek, C.
van der Does, F.
Seinen, A.B.
Melzer, S.
Tromp, P.C.
van der Laan, S.
Publication year
2021
Abstract
A method has been developed to screen large numbers (~103–104 per sample) of coarse airborne dust particles for the occurrence of Pb-rich phases, together with quantification of the particles’ mineralogy, chemistry, and inferred provenance. Using SEM-EDS spectral imaging (SI) at 15 kV, and processing with the custom software PARC, screening of individual SI pixels is performed for Pb at the concentration level of ~10% at a length-scale of ~1 µm. The issue of overlapping Pb-Mα and S-Kα signal is resolved by exploiting peak shape criteria. The general efficacy of the method is demonstrated on a set of NIST particulate dust standard reference materials (SRMs 1649b, 2580, 2584 and 2587) with variable total Pb concentrations, and applied to a set of 31 dust samples taken in the municipalities surrounding the integrated steelworks of Tata Steel in IJmuiden, the Netherlands. The total abundances of Pb-rich pixels in the samples range from none to 0.094 area % of the (total) particle surfaces. Overall, out of ca. 92k screened particles, Pb was found in six discrete Pb-phase dominated particles and, more commonly, as superficial sub-particles (sub-micron to 10 µm) adhering to coarser particles of diverse and Pb-unrelated provenance. No relationship is apparent between the samples’ Pb-rich pixel abundance and their overall composition in terms of particle provenanc.
Subject
Airborne dust
Particulate
Steelmaking; lead
Provenance; mineralogy
Microscopy
SEM
Characterisation
Methodology
Environment & Sustainability
Urbanisation
To reference this document use:
http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:564daa71-f704-4044-89e7-86ad387ff7c8
TNO identifier
959454
Source
Minerals, 11 (11), 1-45
Document type
article