Stabilization of mercury contaminated sediments

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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.