Innovative technology enabling selective removal of mercury from concentrated acids

Important results from the project

The goals were largely met, although technical challenges remain in purifying concentrated acids, requiring further development. A global sulfuric acid producer proactively reached out based on prior results, providing realistic conditions, reliable testing, and strengthening potential for collaboration, scale-up, and industrial impact.

Expected long term effects

The project is expected to enable the efficient purification of concentrated acids from mercury, which increases resource efficiency and reduces the environmental impact of the industry. This in turn can help smelters gain a stronger commercial position for their by-product, sulfuric acid, as a cleaner acid can be sold to more customers. In addition, collaborations with global actors are expected to lead to commercial scale-up and wider international use of the technology.

Approach and implementation

The project was carried out according to plan with lab tests followed by flow tests on industrial acid. The collaboration initially developed better than expected, thanks to an industrial player´s contribution with acid from production for realistic tests. However, technical challenges and the need to test more electrode materials and substrates than planned led to delays. The collaboration worked very well between Atium, Chalmers and the industry.