During the first week of November, the Mercury Reduction Project of UMass Boston's Environmental Business and Technology Center will start testing new technologies to reduce or eliminate mercury discharges from the labs of the Human Nutrition and Research Laboratory at Tufts University.
There are a variety of reasons why these new technologies are being tested. First, mercury is a toxic heavy metal pollutant, which can cause severe damage to humans, wildlife, and the environment. Hospitals and laboratories have been identified as a significant source of mercury discharge, since certain forms of it are used in medical instrumentation and applications.
Second, the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) now require compliance with strict standards for mercury discharge in wastewater, currently 1.0 parts per billion, and this standard poses significant challenges for hospitals and other medical institutions where mercury may be needed for diagnostic work. There are significant fines for violations. One Boston-area institution was fined $250,000 because of a recent mercury violation.
The Mercury Reduction Project is a collaboration of the Environmental Business and Technology Center, the MWRA, and five companies--ICET of Norwood; SolmeteX of Billerica; Aqua Terra Aero of Cleveland, Ohio; and Prosys of North Billerica in partnership with DuBois Chemical of Providence, Rhode Island. Three Boston-area institutions, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and the Tufts Human Nutrition and Research Laboratory, are participating. Providing expertise to the project are ECOS Prof. Gordon Wallace, and Prof. Bhatt Vadlamani of Management and Marketing. Testing has been underway since the summer at Brigham and Women's and Newton Wellesley Hospitals. The companies are testing several technologies.
According to Wallace, there are three approaches to mercury reduction in these facilities. The first is source control, or reducing mercury use in the laboratory. Second, "point of use" reduction, eliminates the mercury before it enters the lab's wastewater (imagine a water filter which attaches to your kitchen sink spigot). Third, "end of pipe" treatment reduces or eliminates mercury at the point where all wastewater leaves the facility.
Both "point of use" and "end of pipe" technologies are being tested. According to Wallace, who provides analytic services and technical advice to the companies, both types of technologies have barriers that must be overcome.
While "point of use" technologies can be effective at eliminating "new" mercury from going into the system, it cannot reduce the release of "old" mercury--usually from contaminated pipes--from getting into the sewers. Efficient implementation means a knowledge of mercury concentrations related to activities within the lab&emdash;information that is difficult to measure, but neccessary to pinpoint which labs require point of use technologies, and which labs have negligible discharges.
"End of pipe" technologies require a pre-conditioning of the wastewater to get the mercury into a reactive form that can be easily treated. Observations to date indicate that a significant fraction of the mercury is in a form not readily available to treatment. Superior results have been achieved with a pre-conditioning step in the process.
"So far, three of the four vendors have shown that their technologies can reach the reduction goal of less than 1microgram per liter of water under certain conditions in the field," says Wallace. However, reducing the mercury release to that standard consistently remains the goal.
The project provides significant benefits to the companies that are testing their technologies as well, says William Brah, director of the Environmental Business and Technology Center. "We are as much concerned with the technology as with the business venture, so we are trying to help them emerge from the tests with a business strategy." He says that ICET is now in a joint venture with an Ohio company that will produce its prototype mercury filtering system if it is successful. Testing will be completed by March.