NOVEL NANOSTRUCTURED SORBENTS FOR VAPOR-PHASE MERCURY CAPTURE

摘要

This paper describes the development and evaluation of novel carbon, carbon composite, and non-carbon-based sorbents for vapor phase mercury capture. Elemental mercury in concentrations of 60 μg/m~3 is generated in argon gas and then passed through a thermostatically controlled fixed bed reactor followed by atomic fluorescence detection of oxidized and elemental mercury. Semi-continuous breakthrough curves are measured, which provide comparative information on the adsorption capacity and kinetics for a wide range of novel nanomaterials and conventional sorbents as reference samples. These new nano-structured materials include self-assembled mesoporous carbon with varying surface treatments, sulfur nanotubes, selenium/carbon nanocomposites, and various nanophase amalgamating metals. Capacities are measured as a function of temperature from 20℃ to 150℃ and are compared to those for commercial activated carbons specifically optimized for mercury capture. Some of the nanomaterial formulations in this exploratory work appear quite promising for higher efficiency mercury control.