Method of recovering elemental mercury from soils

摘要

In a method of recovering elemental mercury from soil, the soil contaminated with elemental mercury is first sized in a screening and pressure-washing step. The fine soil particles which pass through the screening device contain essentially all of the elemental mercury. The screened soil particles are fed in the form of a slurry into a gravitational separator. The resulting soil tailings and discharged and a residue comprising heavy materials and elemental mercury is then fed into a gravitational concentrator for a further separation step. The method allows the recovery of more than 99.5% of elemental mercury.