Novel Nanostructured Sorbents for Mercury Capture

The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate novel sorbents for vapor phase mercury capture. Elemental mercury in concentrations of 60 μg/m3 is generated in argon gas and then passed through a fixed bed reactor containing the sorbent. From the breakthrough curve of the sorbent, the material's capacity in mass mercury per mass sorbent is determined. The capacities of various activated carbons and carbon black are compared to those of newly developed sorbents and existing sorbents with modified surface chemistry. These new sorbents include: mesoporous carbon, ozone treated carbon black, sulfur nanotubes, and selenium doped carbon black. Capacities of the various sorbents are also determined as a function of temperature. Activated carbon is shown to have the highest capacity on a per mass basis at room temperature, but on a per surface area basis and at higher temperatures the chemically reactive sorbents are shown to have higher capacities. Given that activated carbon remains the standard in many mercury capture applications, these novel sorbent technologies represent possible avenues of more effective mercury control.