The projected increase in the use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) motivates the development of methods to manage consumer exposure to mercury and its environmental release at the end of lamp life. This work characterizes the time-resolved release of mercury vapor from broken CFLs and from underlying substrates after removal of glass fragments to simulate cleanup. In new lamps, mercury vapor is released gradually in amounts that reach 1.3 mg or 30% of the total lamp inventory after four days. Similar time profiles but smaller amounts are released from spent lamps or from underlying substrates. Nanoscale formulations of S, Se, Cu, Ni, Zn, Ag, and WS2 are evaluated for capture of Hg vapor under these conditions and compared to conventional microscale formulations. Adsorption capacities range over 7 orders of magnitude, from 0.005 (Zn micropowder) to 188 000 μg/g (unstabilized nano-Se), depending on sorbent chemistry and particle size. Nanosynthesis offers clear advantages for most sorbent chemistries. Unstabilized nano-selenium in two forms (dry powder and impregnated cloth) was successfully used in a proof-of-principle test for the in situ, real-time suppression of Hg vapor escape following CFL fracture.
A set of carbon materials was treated by a choice of common oxidizers to investigate the mercury capture capacities at varying temperature conditions. It was found that ozone treatment dramatically increases the mercury capture capacity of carbon surfaces by factors up to 134, but the activity is easily destroyed by exposure to the atmosphere, to water vapor, or by mild heating. Freshly ozonetreated carbon surfaces are shown to oxidize iodide to iodine in solution and this ability fades with aging. FTIR analysis shows broad C-O stretch features from 950 to 1300 cm −1 , which decay upon atmospheric exposure and are similar to the C-O-C asymmetric stretch features of ethylene secondary ozonide. The combined results suggest that the ultra-high mercury capture efficiency is due to a subset of labile C-O functional groups with residual oxidizing power that are likely epoxides or (epoxide-containing) secondary ozonides. The results open the possibility for in situ ozonolysis to create high-performance carbon-based Hg sorbents.
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