Insights into the extraction of mercury from fluorescent lamps: A review

Abstract

Mercury-based lighting systems have ruled the global market for more than a decade. It did not take much longer to replace their predecessors, viz. incandescent bulbs, due to magnified advantages of fluorescent lamps that relied entirely on mercury-excitation. The cold-emission with superior efficiency and longer life made it easy to wipe out the tungsten-filament based bulbs from the market and replaced it with fluorescent lamps. However, the listed advantages were soon overruled by a number of demerits that started to come into the picture with an increasing use of fluorescent lamps. The toxic mercury vapor escaping from the broken or used fluorescent lamps has become a matter of concern for the environment. Consequently, it has become a huge necessity to address methods for safe disposal of mercury and reuse them. This article gives a detailed discussion on the hazards caused by mercury and its origin from disposed lighting devices. The toxicity spread by mercury in nature has posed a serious concern for the survival of living organisms on this planet and the ways to thwart this issue has been listed in this article. The hazards caused by the mercury toxicity to the environment and its harmful effects on life have also been included here. This article also exhibits some methods for speciation and extraction of mercury from fluorescent lamps without causing any harm to the nature.