This article originally provided by The State Journal

January 3, 2008

Team Finds New Way to Strip Mercury from Water

Story by Paul Darst

MONTGOMERY -- Coal sludge ponds dot the landscape of West Virginia and other mining areas across the country.

Although they might look peaceful enough, the water contained in those ponds contains a deadly poison -- mercury, one of the most lethal substances on earth. Because mercury is difficult and expensive to remove from water, government and industry have avoided the issue for the most part.

Now a group of researchers at the West Virginia University Institute of Technology has developed a relatively inexpensive method for removing mercury from water.

"It's a chemical process that makes it possible to collect and dispose of (mercury)," said Richard Schoening, associate professor and chairman of the chemistry department.

Researchers at the university discovered a bacteria that is indigenous to West Virginia that is attracted to mercury 2+, a deadly compound of the element, he said. For the past two years, the research team has worked with that bacteria to develop a process to remove the compound from water.

"It's a biochemical reaction," Schoening said. "... The idea is that we can then regenerate the bacteria that 'eat' mercury.

"We collected bacteria from a local holding pond and built it up to hold a lot more (mercury). It changes mercury 2+ to mercury 0, metal mercury."

Clamshell Effect

For the laboratory experiments, the research team has been using glass cylinders containing wood chips, said Jay Wiedemann, assistant professor of chemistry. The mercury-eating bacteria live on those chips. Water containing the mercury compound is fed into the cylinder from the top and is filtered through the wood chips.

The university has two patents pending on the process, Schoening said. And initial results show the process to be highly effective.

The research team discovered that a protein in the locally grown bacteria is attracted to mercury, Schoning said.

The complex protein contains sulfur molecules that capture the mercury compounds, Wiedemann said.

Once the mercury 2+ is transformed into mercury 0, it can be released and discarded, Wiedemann said. Although mercury 0 does have commercial value, it would take a long time to accumulate enough to make marketing it profitable, he said.

Potential Applications

Undergraduate students have conducted much of the research conducted so far on the mercury project, Schoening said. Getting undergraduates involved in research projects is the best way for them to learn, he said. The university has received funding for the project from the West Virginia Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (WVEPSCoR), which has an interest in promoting undergraduate research.

The research team includes student and faculty members from various disciplines, including mathematics, engineering and chemistry, Wiedemann said.

And the research has potentially wide-ranging applications, Schoening said. The West Virginia Coal Association and some individual coal companies have expressed interest. The power industry also is keeping an eye on the research. Another interested party could be PPG Industries Inc., which the state is forcing to reduce mercury emissions at its Natrium Plant in New Martinsville.

Program Growth

Within the next two to three years, the Tech research team is hopeful that it will be able to construct a full-size model of the separation device, Wiedemann said. That prototype would have to be built near a sludge pond in the Montgomery area and capable of holding several thousand gallons of water.

To reach that phase, however, more lab work is necessary, Schoening said. The university has just launched a fundraising campaign that will generate money for a new lab on campus. It intends to convert a large room now used for storage into a new lab. The campaign's goal is $1.75 million.

The new lab will help make it possible for the Tech team to take the mercury project from the laboratory to the marketplace, Schoening said.

Because of the resources at the research team's disposal, Schoening said it is possible to bridge the old divide between academic research and commercial application.

The institution's sometimes-criticized merger with West Virginia University is helpful in those endeavors, Schoening said. The West Virginia University Research Corp., for example, has helped research teams at Tech with legal matters and other issues.