Ali Ebrahimi - Occupational Health Engineering Department, School of Public Health, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran.
Ahmad Salarifar - Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Natural Resources, Islamic Azad University, Bandar Abbas Branch, Bandar Abbas, Iran

Mercury as a hazardous material can be released in air and caused renal failure and CNS problem in humans. In this study, mercury vapor removed from air based on nickel-coated on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (Ni-MWCNTs) as a novel sorbent at room temperature. By procedure, amalgamation of mercury with Ni-MWCNTs was achieved by solid-gas phase removal method (SGPR). In bench scale set up, the mercury vapor generated and mixed with purified air with electro air cleaner and moved to sorbent at optimized flow rate. After thermal desorption of Ni-MWCNTs at 200 oC, the mercury vapor flowed to quartz glass cell with argon gas and determined by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometer technique (CV-AAS). In optimized conditions, 25 mg of Ni-MWCNTs and MWCNTs with different size from 30-100 nm was used and the adsorption capacity of sorbents was obtained 194 mg g-1 and 64 mg g-1, respectively. The efficient recovery was obtained at optimized conditions such as, temperature of 25-40 and flow rate of 200 mL min-1. Due to results, the surface of Ni-MWCNTs had good potential for removal of mercury vapor from the air and can be used as a low cost and efficient sorbent in industrial workplace

Mercury,Removal from air, Nickel coated on multi-walled carbon nanotubes, Adsorption, Solid-gas phase removal