Mercury in rocks

Banov, B.S., 1959, Mercury in Rocks of the Southwestern District of the Donets Basin, Donets Ind. Inst. Trudy 37, p. 149-152,... 

Aston SR, Riley JP. The determination of mercury in rocks and sediments. Anal. Chim. Acta 1972, 59, 349-354. 

The average concentration of mercury in rock is about 0.1 ig/g and since about lO tone of rock is weathered annually, it is estimated that about 800 tone of Hg is put into the atmosphere each year. This mercury is distributed uniformly around the earth and presents little environmental danger. It is the non-uniform or concentrated dumping of mercury that is dangerous and must be avoided. 

Smith CN, Kesler SE, Blum JD, Rytuba JR (2008) Isotope geochemistry of mercury in source rocks, mineral deposits and spring deposits of the CaUfomia Coast Ranges, USA. Earth Planet Sci Lett 269 398-406... 

Elemental mercury, which is a liquid, is found in the free state in rocks, for example the mercury mines in Slovenia and Spain. It was known as quicksilver and its Latin name, hydragyrum (from which its chemical symbol, Hg, is derived), means liquid silver. It is also found combined with sulphur in brightly coloured cinnabar, and with oxygen. 

During the electrolysis the cell is rocked, causing the amalgam to flow back and forth. The amalgam produced in the end compartment is mixed with the mercury in the central compartment, and it then reacts with the water in this compartment ... 

The category of PBTs, as defined by U.S. EPA, includes mercury, lead, dioxins, and several dozen other substances. Mercury and lead have so far been the most widely targeted of these substances because, like other heavy metals (naturally occurring elements contained in rocks, sediments, and soils), they do not degrade at all. Polychlorinated dioxins are also PBTs, and while normally they are not purposefully manufactured, they are often generated as byproducts during the manufacture of chlorinated compounds and during incineration or combustion.3... 

Table 5-7. Comparison of the Biomagnification of Methylmercury and Inorganic Mercury in a Freshwater Food Chain (Little Rock Lake)...

This element is a chalcophile, and in unweathered rocks is most commonly found as the mineral cinnabar (HgS). In soil environments, the cationic form, is most common, as the reduced oxidation state (+1) has a limited stability range. Reduction to the metallic elemental form, H, is easily achieved in soils by both biological and chemical reactions. Elemental mercury is somewhat volatile, and the vapor is extremely toxic to organisms. Under anaerobic conditions at least, soil microbes methylate mercury, forming volatile organomercury compounds that are bioavail-able and present a health hazard. At the same time, however, anaerobic conditions can convert Hg into the exceedingly insoluble sulhde, HgS. Some of the more important transformations possible for mercury in soil are summarized in Figure 9.9. 

Effect of wettability. Our attention to the effect of curvature on the saturation pressure was directed to a bubble or, equivalently, when the liquid wets the solid surface. This is often true in hydrocarbon reservoirs in which gas is the nonwetting phase and oil is the wetting phase. However, in some other systems, gas may be the wetting phase and oil (or the liquid) may be the nonwetting phase. Even in rocks, liquid mercury is the nonwetting phase and air is the wetting phase. In such cases, the Young-Laplace equation of capillarity for a tube should be written as... 

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