A review of homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions of atmospheric mercury

As the main route of long-range transport, atmosphere plays an important role in the biogeochemical cycle of mercury. The atmospheric chemical properties vary a lot during mercury transportat, leading to conversions among GEM, RGM and PBM. The conversions have significant influences on the processing and fate of mercury in the atmosphere. In this paper, the recent findings about the chemical reactions of atmospheric mercury were reviewed, such as the portioning of mercury between different interfaces, the oxidation reactions of Hg⁰ and reduction reactions of Hg²⁺. These findings could be helpful for the description of environmental behavior of atmospheric mercury, the clarification of chemical conversion rates of atmospheric mercury under various environmental conditions, and the precise estimation of residence time of atmospheric mercury. The homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions of atmospheric mercury could be identified by using new technologies, laboratory analysis and field monitoring. It could be an important content to combine the reaction mechanisms and long-range transport modeling in the atmospheric mercury study in the future.