Abstract
It is very common for gold and silver mines in the United States and elsewhere to produce elemental mercury as a by-product, which is strictly restrained by the Mercury Export Ban Act issued in 2008. The market for elemental mercury is oversupplied so many gold companies are examining methods to stabilize mercury in an insoluble form for disposal or long term storage.The aim of this work was to develop a hydrometallurgical (or wet) technique to convert elemental mercury to stable compounds by 1) dissolving mercury in aqueous hypochlorite media, and 2) precipitating mercury as mercury sulfide or mercury selenide through controlled reaction with aqueous thiosulfate or selenosulfate ion. Different parameters such as pH, temperature, reagent concentration and rate of agitation in hypochlorite oxidation, thiosulfate precipitation and selenosulfate precipitation were studied and are reported in this work. Very stable precipitates of mercury may be formed by these methods.
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