Non-isothermal kinetics of the thermal desorption of mercuryfrom a contaminated soil

The Almadén mining district (Ciudad Real, Spain) was the largest cinnabar (mercury sulphide) mine in the world. Its soils have high levels of mercury a consequence of its natural lithology, but often made much worse by its mining history. The present work examines the thermal desorption of two conta...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: López Gómez, Félix Antonio, Sierra, M. J., Rodríguez-Largo, Olga, Millán, R., Alguacil, Francisco José
Format: article
Publication Date:2014
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/112615
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/112615
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Contaminated soils
Thermal desorption
Kinetic
Mercury
DSC
Description
Summary:The Almadén mining district (Ciudad Real, Spain) was the largest cinnabar (mercury sulphide) mine in the world. Its soils have high levels of mercury a consequence of its natural lithology, but often made much worse by its mining history. The present work examines the thermal desorption of two contaminated soils from the Almadén area under non-isothermal conditions in a N2 atmosphere, using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). DSC was performed at different heating rates between room temperature and 600 °C. Desorption temperatures for different mercury species were determined. The Friedman, Flynn-Wall-Ozawa and Coasts-Redfern methods were employed to determine the reaction kinetics from the DSC data. The activation energy and pre-exponential factor for mercury desorption were calculated. © 2014 CSIC.