Air pollution Analysis: Nickel paste on Multi-walled carbon nanotubes as novel adsorbent for the mercury removal from air

Abstract

Mercury as a hazardous material caused health problem in humans.In this study,mercury vapor removed from air by nickel-coated on multi-walled carbon nanotubes(Ni-MWCNTs)as a novel sorbent.Amalgamation of mercury with Ni-MWCNTs was achieved by solid-gas phase removal method(SGPR).In bench scale set up, the mercury vapor generated and moved to sorbent at optimized flow rate.After thermal desorption of Ni-MWCNTs at 200oC, the mercury vapor flowed to quartz glass cell with argon gas and determined by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometer technique(CV-AAS).In optimized conditions,25 mg of Ni-MWCNTs and MWCNTs with different size from 30-100nm was used.The adsorption capacity of sorbents was obtained 194 mg g-1 and 64 mg g-1,respectively.The efficient recovery was obtained at optimized conditions such as, temperature of 25-40 and flow rate of 200 mL min-1.So, Ni-MWCNTs had good potential for removal of mercury vapor from the air and can be used as a low cost and efficient sorbent in industrial workplace