International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract—Aqueous sodium hypochlorite is often used to detoxify solid wastes containing elemental mercury and its compounds by oxidative dissolution of mercury in the form of a soluble mercurochloro complex. Experiments were conducted to estimate global kinetics and interfacial mass transfer parameters of the reaction between elemental mercury and aqueous sodium hypochlorite. The reaction did not conform to either pure mass transfer or pure instantaneous reaction regimes. The order and activation energy of the reaction were estimated to be 1.168 and 13.48 kJ mol^-1 respectively. Experimental data on reaction enhancement factors may be used for design of an industrial solid waste detoxification reactor.

Index Terms—Mercury, solid waste, sodium hypochlorite.

S. Bandyopadhyay is with the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson, MS, USA.
S. Chakrabarti is with the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Calcutta, India.
D. B. Zaini and S. Bhattacharjee are with Chemical Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia (e-mail: sekhar.bhatta@petronas.com.my).

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Cite: S. Bandyopadhyay, S. Chakraborty, D. B. Zaini, and S. Bhattacharjee, "Kinetic Studies on Oxidative Dissolution of Elemental Mercury in Aqueous Sodium Hypochlorite," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 7, no. 7, pp. 516-519, 2016.