Mercury is a toxic metal, without biological effect in human body and causes CNS and renal disease. So, removal of mercury vapor through sorbents is an important environmental problem. Due to high capability of nano particle sorbents, nano particle palladium modified on multi wall carbon nano tube (NPd-MWCNT) and single wall carbon nano tube(SWCNT) were selected for this investigation. In this study, instrumental conditions, method procedure and different effect parameters such as, absorption and adsorption efficiency, absorption capacity, temperature, time and repeatability were studied and optimized. In addition the efficiency of sorbents was compared. Absorption capacity and efficiency of sorbents depend on the amount of sorbent, kind of nano particle and mercury mass concentration. For 80 mg of sorbents, working range of NPd-MWCNT and SWCNT were achieved 0.01-3 μg and 0.02- 0.7 μg respectively. Limit of detection (LOD) of NPd-MWCNT (0.003 μg) and SWCNT (0.006 μg) were obtained. In this research, mercury vapor was determined and produced by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry (CV-AAS) and mercury pilot respectively. The results show us, the maximum absorption capacity of NPd-MWCNT (8 μg g-1) was higher than SWCNT (0.5 μg g-1) and NPd-MWCNT that had high potential mercury removal.
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