With more countries passing laws to ban the old type of incandescent bulb if favour of the CFL (the mercury bearing energy saver), the bulb which no one likes, there will be more mercury coming through our waste stream in the future when these are disposed of.
In order to get mercury from the powder it is necessary to heat it to a predefined temperature, for a considerable length of time (upto 24 hours). As one of the UK's largest lamp recyclers, the Balcan lamp recycling facility uses a specialist company (who deal with all types of mercury waste) to do this on their behalf, but have been told out of approx 1000Kg of mercury bearing phosphor powder <1.0Kg of mercury is obtained.
Balcan believes the additional recycling required to obtain the mercury just from the phosphor powder, collected during its lamp recycling process, is more harmful to the environment and not cost effective. However, if the system can used with different types of mercury waste the recycling costs involved maybe offset artifically by the easier to recycle and more heavily contaminated mercury wastestream.
Balcan's Philosophy:
Having looked at costings we believe it is not financially viable, or commercially sensible, to invest in mercury recovery equipment only for mercury phosphor powder from lamps. We do believe the mercury should be reclaimed where possible, but there are all the associated costs with energy, running and licencing from the authorities to generate such a small amount mercury (1/26th litre per 1000 litres) with little to no commercial value.
Which Retort Distiller?
We do not manufacture a distiller for the mercury extraction. However, to complete a full recycling loop and if the intention
is to invest in this type of equipment then we suggest you contact Effective
Energy Associates LLC in the US, contact rjabele@sprintmail.com . Their option allows drums of mercury waste to be processed without the
need to decant into trays, like many other systems. Just wheel the drums in, switch on and let the program run it's course.
