Mercury is one of the nation's highest priority pollutants, and there is strong motivation to develop better capture methods for application to spills, contaminated sites, flue gases, consumer product recycling, and Hg stockpile stabilization. Modern synthesis methods offer routes to new nanoscale versions of many common materials, including those currently used for mercury capture, but only few of the many potential nanoscale sorbents have been systematically developed and tested.

This paper describes the synthesis and Hg capture performance of nano-sulfur, amorphous nano-selenium, nanoscale metals (Cu, Ni, Zn), nanostructured carbons and composites of these materials. Sulfur nanotubes are prepared by a template method and nanoselenium by colloidal reduction of selenite with glutathione. All the sorbents were tested by passing a continuous stream of elemental mercury vapor over fixed beds followed by real-time Hg detection by atomic fluorescence.

Several of the new sorbent formulations show dramatically elevated activity compared to conventional sorbents, including nanoscale sulfur, amorphous selenium, and copper. The paper discusses both the synthesis and capture chemistry as well as a range of potential applications that are targets for further development.