Albemarle's MercLok®* is a versatile remediation technology that rapidly stabilizes** elemental, ionic and methylmercury, thus reducing leachability by up to more than 99% in a wide range of soils, waste and contaminated media.
A Longstanding Problem And A New Solution
Mercury is a highly mobile and potent neurotoxin that adversely impacts our water resources and food supply. MercLok provides a cost-effective solution for prolonged immobilization of mercury allowing sites to meet regulatory mercury limits and protecting aquatic and terrestrial life from mercury poisoning. MercLok has been shown to reduce leachable concentrations of mercury by greater than 95% at sufficient dosage rates and conditions.
Sites can be treated with MercLok to rapidly sequester elemental mercury and other forms of mobile mercury that, if left untreated, will eventually leach into the surrounding waters and food chain.
MercLok is Effective in a Variety of Soils and Conditions
Results from soil studies using industry accepted testing methods have demonstrated MercLok’s ability to capture elemental, ionic, and methylmercury in soil and reduce the leachability of mercury by greater than 95%.
In a batch reactor study with a variety of soils contaminated with a high portion of elemental mercury and varying environmental factors (natural organic matter, water saturation level, water salinity and soil composition), MercLok reduced leachability to concentrations below a detection limit of 2 ppb.
Elemental mercury is difficult to contain, volatilizes to create an environmental and health and safety hazard, and is expensive to transport and dispose.
Even soils and wastes that do not have visible mercury beads but are known to contain elemental mercury must be preprocessed and disposed of at a high cost. MercLok has proven to quickly capture and stabilize elemental mercury with standard test methods and in field trials.
Case Study
Discover how the owners of a California ranch with an old mercury mine tackled the challenge of managing mercury-contaminated waste. Traditional methods like surface grading, concrete capping, and using amendments for other heavy metals often failed to contain mercury for more than a few years. Other options, such as building a landfill on-site or transporting contaminated soil to a landfill, were costly and harmful to the ecosystem.
In 2020, Albemarle gained access to the site to test a new, promising solution for mercury stabilization and collaborated with the landowners to address the contamination.
* MercLok® is a registered trademark of Albemarle Amendments, LLC.
**As demonstrated by standard tests [EPA 1311, 1312 and extended EPA 1314] and analytical measurements performed on field samples.