Although this is a water research and consultancy group. I have recently been referred for this problem. Can anyone help me on suggestions to remove trace level mercury from mining flue gas?
Due to its adverse impact on health, as well as its global distribution, long atmospheric lifetime and propensity for deposition in the aquatic environment and in living tissue, the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) has classified mercury and its compounds as a severe air quality threat. Such widespread presence of mercury in the environment originates from both natural and anthropogenic sources.
The choice of flue gas cleaning method depends on the volume of gases per hour, the content of mercury and other compounds in gases, the temperature of gases and other. Use of pretreated activated carbon can be effective in removing traces of mercury.
You can consider putting up a mercury removal plant which will remove the mercury as mercurous chloride (calomel) which can be sold as mercury sludge. If tonnage is sufficient you can put up a electrolysis plant to convert calomel to mercury.
All the sorbents adsorb elemental mercury through three mechanisms:
Physic sorption,
Chemisorption and
Amalgamation.
Graphene Oxide used for absorption.
Activated Carbon used but it is expensive. Sorbent(zeolite, bentonite) can be used OR Nano-structured zinc sulfide (Nano-ZnS)
S-Zeolite sorbent efficiency comparable with a commercial ACs for Hg capture
The most general used sorbents include activated carbon (ACs)/treated ACs, calcium based sorbents, petroleum coke and zeolites. All of these sorbents capture elemental mercury or catalyse mercury oxidization by means of active surface chemicals.