June 9, 2006—A material designed to capture and remove mercury and other toxic substances from industrial waste streams is now available for commercial use. Battelle has licensed the SAMMS technology developed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to Steward Environmental Solutions. Battelle operates the laboratory for the Dept. of Energy and transfers lab-developed technologies to the marketplace through licenses and other means.
SAMMS, or Self-Assembled Monolayers on Mesoporous Supports, is a technology that can be tailored to selectively remove metal contaminants without creating hazardous waste or by-products. Steward intends to initially market use of the SAMMS for treating stack emissions from coal-fired power plants, process industry, and municipal facilities.
In tests conducted at PNNL, 99.9 percent of mercury in simulated waste water was successfully removed. That reduction places the mercury levels well below the Environmental Protection Agency’s discharge limits. This could equate to significant savings in disposal charges for users with mercury or other toxic metals in their facility waste streams, according to the recent announcement. In addition, SAMMS can be easily adapted to recover many toxic substances, including toxic metals such as lead, chromium, arsenic, as well as radionuclides.
EPA estimates that coal-fired power plants contribute about 48 tons of mercury to the US environment each year. In March 2005, EPA issued the first federal rule to permanently cap and reduce mercury emission from coal-fired power plants. This rule makes the US the first country in the world to regulate mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
PNNL was honored in February 2006 with a Federal Laboratory Consortium award for Excellence in Technology Transfer for the laboratory’s development and commercialization of SAMMS.
For more information visit PNNL Web site.
