Immobilization of sulfur from different precursors on mini rice-husk-ash pellet coated chitosan film and the application for mercury vapor uptake

Abstract

Stabilizing elemental mercury using elemental sulfur has been a laboratory standard method but the studies in gas system are still growing. This study aims to explore the effect of different type immobilized sulfurs toward the mercury vapor uptake in a mini gas reactor. Hypothetically, different type of sulfur might give different particle aggregation. Sulfur powder, sulfur dissolved in carbon disulfide and colloidal sulfur from sodium thiosulfate-hydrochloric acid were immobilized on mini rice-husk-ash pellets that were previously coated with chitosan film except for pellets with sulfur-CS 2 treatment. The average thickness of chitosan film was 58 µm covered the each pellet surface with dimension of 3 mm Ø x 4 mm. The trends of the mercury uptake and the rate of absorption were described as follow; Pellet-S colloid > Pellet-S CS2 > Pellet-S powder . The mean percentages of mercury uptake after 1 h running at 70 °C were 99.36; 89.09 and 75.00, respectively. The reverse trends were observed for the size of S-particle aggregation and the amount of S found on the pellet surface.