Fluorescent Lamps using a Mercury Dispenser

Preventing mercury vapor release from broken fluorescent lamps during shipping.

Fluorescent lamps are estimated to annually release 1 t of mercury into the air in the United States; transport of used lamps may play an important role in these emissions. In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added lamps to the universal waste rule to encourage recycling by allowing shipment to recycling facilities by common carrier. The rules required that lamp packaging must be ...

Remediation of Indoor Airborne Mercury Released from Broken Fluorescent Lamps

Mercury Vapor Release from Broken Compact Fluorescent Lamps and In Situ Capture by New Nanomaterial Sorbents

The projected increase in the use of compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) motivates the development of methods to manage consumer exposure to mercury and its environmental release at the end of lamp life. This work characterizes the time-resolved release of mercury vapor from broken CFLs and from underlying substrates after removal of glass fragments to simulate cleanup. In new lamps, mercury vapor...

Removal of mercury bonded in residual glass from spent fluorescent lamps.

The current technologies available for recycling fluorescent lamps do not completely remove the phosphor powder attached to the surface of the glass. Consequently, the glass contains the mercury diffused through the glass matrix and the mercury deposited in the phosphor powder that has not been removed during treatment at the recycling plant. A low-cost process, with just one stage, which can b...

Determination of mercury distribution inside spent compact fluorescent lamps by atomic absorption spectrometry.

In this study, spent compact fluorescent lamps were characterized to determine the distribution of mercury. The procedure used in this research allowed mercury to be extracted in the vapor phase, from the phosphor powder, and the glass matrix. Mercury concentration in the three phases was determined by the method known as cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry. Median values obtained in the ...