Abstract

A study had been done on the determination of the amount of mercury present in an average CFL and the amount of mercury leached from the CFLs into the soil from where they are dumped. The extraction of the mercury from CFLs and the polluted soil was done by acid digestion. The electrochemical analytical method called Anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV) which is based on the potential dependent current measurement was used for the determination of mercury in the CFLs and the polluted soil. The determinations were done by standard addition technique in the exploratory mode. The results showed that the CFL contains 0.1175 mg/g of mercury. The soil from the spent CFLs dumped site reported a mercury concentration of 0.0149 mg/g. The leaching of mercury from the spent CFLs to the soil is confirmed by the analysis of soil from an artificially spiked spent CFLs dumped system.

Key words: Mercury, compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), anodic stripping voltammetry, leaching.