Objective
The chloralkali industry, generating chlorine and caustic soda, still uses mercurycontaining electrochemical cells, and is historically the most important source of mercury pollution. Cleaner, non-mercury, processes are available, but mercury brine sludges are still produced, and present a serious problem.
Mercury is also present in fluorescent light fittings, and discarded tubes present a pollution hazard. When tubes are collected, mercury can be recovered by distillation, condensation of mercury, and adsorption of residual mercury vapour on activated carbon, from which it must subsequently be recovered.
The objective of the project is to develop a treatment unit to recover mercury from:
(a) brine sludges from the chloralkali industry
(b) residues from fluorescent light fittings
Elemental mercury will be recovered suitable for immediate recycling, thereby reducing primary mining and extraction.
The project will comprise the following RTD tasks:
1. Assessment of requirements relative to EC and national regulations on discharge of mercury.
2. Characterisation of solid residues arising from fluorescent lamps and mercury-rich brine sludges.
3. Preconcentration of mercury-bearing residues, followed by leaching of mercury.
4. Iron removal and mercury concentration using ion exchange or solvent extraction.
5. Leaching tests on residues from (3.) for further extractable mercury. 6. Immobilisation of any toxic residues from (5.).
7. Design electrochemical call for mercury recovery.
8. Design and construct integrated unit to extract mercury from mercury-rich residues, and recover as
elemental mercury, using above processes.
9. Demonstrate mercury recovery unit in field trials.
10. Provide economic, technical and environmental assessment of the process.
Successful outcome of this project will provide an effective on-site, at-source means of preventing mercury
pollution.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesrecycling
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrytransition metals
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- engineering and technologychemical engineeringseparation technologiesdistillation
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistryhalogens
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Topic(s)
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
CHESTER
United Kingdom