The presence of elemental mercury in wellhead natural gas is an important industrial problem, since even low levels of mercury can damage cryogenic aluminium heat exchangers and other plant equipment. Mercury present in the natural gas stream will also dramatically shorten the useful life of precious metal catalysts. The present work reviews the overall process of elemental mercury removal in practice using non-regenerative adsorbents (e.g. sulfur-impregnated porous carbon), addressing the various influencing parameters such as the method of sulfur impregnation, the impregnation temperature, the sulfur to carbon ratio, the impregnation time, the impact of flue gas constituents, the effect of processing temperature, and the nature of any carbon-containing functional groups present. The distribution of elemental sulfur is found to be the key to developing an effective adsorbent, rather than quantity of sulfur impregnated. Modifying or developing an adsorbent for elemental mercury removal from natural gas needs a detail physical and chemical characteristics assessment of the adsorbent.

中文翻译：

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硫浸渍多孔碳上的元素汞吸附——综述

井口天然气中元素汞的存在是一个重要的工业问题，因为即使是低水平的汞也会损坏低温铝热交换器和其他工厂设备。天然气流中存在的汞也会大大缩短贵金属催化剂的使用寿命。目前的工作回顾了在实践中使用非再生吸附剂（例如硫浸渍多孔碳）去除元素汞的整个过程，解决了各种影响参数，如硫浸渍方法、浸渍温度、硫碳比、浸渍时间、烟气成分的影响、加工温度的影响以及存在的任何含碳官能团的性质。发现元素硫的分布是开发有效吸附剂的关键，而不是浸渍的硫量。改进或开发用于从天然气中去除元素汞的吸附剂需要对吸附剂进行详细的物理和化学特性评估。