Stabilization of mercury contaminated sediments

汞是一种通过自然和人为活动释放到环境中的剧毒金属。在许多地点，正在努力补救汞含量升高的土壤和沉积物，主要是为了尽量减少生态系统损害和保护渔业。与这种补救努力相关的成本可能非常高，因此希望开发低成本的方法来处理汞污染的土壤和沉积物。该项目的重点是描述汞污染沉积物的处理方案。将进行实验，以评估各种补救办法，利用从过去的工业活动污染的地点获得的沉积物。受污染的沉积物将在异地沉积之前进行稳定化处理，以尽量减少汞渗入土壤和地下水。研究的重点将特别放在通过使用旨在评估加速风化条件下反应的实验来描绘汞的长期浸出。预计实验结果将通过潜在的成本节约使工业受益。如果应用于现场规模，汞通量将减少，从而改善环境，并可能减少接触。

Mercury is a highly toxic metal released to the environment through natural and anthropogenic activities. At many sites, efforts are underway to remediate soils and sediments with elevated mercury, primarily to minimize ecosytem damage and to protect fisheries. The costs associated with such remediation efforts can be exceedingly high, therefore there is a desire to develop low cost methods to treat mercury contaminated soils and sediment. This project focuses on delineation of treatment options for mercury contaminated sediments. Experiments will be conducted to assess various remediation approaches using sediments obtained from a site contaminated through past industrial activities. The contaminated sediments will be stabilized prior to ex situ deposition to minimize Hg leaching to soil and groundwater. Particular emphasis of the study will be placed on delineation of long-term leaching of Hg through the use of experiments which are designed to assess reactions under accelerated weathering conditions. The results of the experiments are expected to benefit industry through potential cost savings. If applied to the site scale, Hg fluxes will be reduced, leading to environmental improvements, and potentially reductions in exposure.