sparta
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Scrounging for mercury
Just wondering how much mercury was in a 400W mercury vapor lamp, and how easy is it to get out?
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Twospoons
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Bugger all.
Bloody hard.
You want mercury tilt switches, or mercury thermometers.
Helicopter: "helico" -> spiral, "pter" -> with wings
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sparta
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How much mercury in an average tilt switch?
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evil_lurker
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Coupla grams maybe. Never measured it out, but its heavy.
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in
beer.
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woelen
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| Quote: | Originally posted by sparta
How much mercury in an average tilt switch? |
I have switches with 3 grams of the metal in it. Your mileage may vary though.
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not_important
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Indeed, the amount can vary widely
http://www.newmoa.org/prevention/mercury/imerc/FactSheets/sw...
Be aware that there are some non-mercury tilt switches around. Some use metal balls that roll, some uses electrolytic liquid sensors and solid state
switches integrated in a single capsule that resemble the old glass mercury switches in size and shape, a few use gallium-indium-tin alloys (those
alloys wet most materials, unlike mercury, and so are more difficult to make practical switches with).
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hashashan
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You can always buy thermometers
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YT2095
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| Quote: | Originally posted by not_important
a few use gallium-indium-tin alloys (those alloys wet most materials, unlike mercury, and so are more difficult to make practical switches with).
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agreed, Galinstan`s great for some Physics experiments like a Faraday motor, sadly with Mercury there`s quite a surface area exposed to the air and
it`s not a good idea, but Galinstan does the same job and just as well for this app. 
\"In a world full of wonders mankind has managed to invent boredom\" - Death
Twinkies don\'t have a shelf life. They have a half-life! -Caine (a friend of mine)
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Phosphor-ing
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Someone asked about extracting Mercury a while back on this board. If I remember correctly there is a industrial switch, or something like that, that
has 100 grams of mercury in it! Easily found on ebay if you know what to call it. UTSE to find it's name.
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12AX7
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Oh, mercury switch? Those things are nice... iron core and a pool of mercury. Coil wrapped around pulls the slugs down, displacing mercury and
making contact. Fun stuff, and they are indeed heavy and sloshy. Still probably a minimum of Hg in them, but more than most items at least.
Tim
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Slimz
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i think a large barometer would probably be the best source.. i have one that has at least 15-20 ml in it. maybe something like this
http://www.phys.ufl.edu/demo/2_FluidMechanics/B_StaticsFluid...
check yard sales / junk stores / flee markets...
[Edited on 1-10-2007 by Slimz]
Johnny was a chemist’s son, but now he is no more. What Johnny thought was H2O was H2SO4
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chemkid
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oh yes, i got a very large mercury thermometer with a good amount of mercury for a dollar and another mercury thermometer thrown in free at a flee
market. Always look for old homes being destroyed or demolition sales so you can rip out the mercury switches.
Chemkid
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indigofuzzy
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What about getting ahold of a mercury sphygmomanometer?
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MagicJigPipe
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I hate to keep referring back to this website but you can by it from unitednuclear.com
It's $25 (+ UPS hazardous materials charge, unfortunatley) for a "2 ounce vial". If this is volume then that would be 812g. If that's a measurement
of weight then it would only be 4mL. So, I can only assume it's volume which is a pretty good amount. Just expensive....
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UnintentionalChaos
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It's probably the 4ml. Evevrything on that site is overpriced.
Department of Redundancy Department - Now with paperwork!
'In organic synthesis, we call decomposition products "crap", however this is not a IUPAC approved nomenclature.' -Nicodem
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chemrox
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25$/812 g is expensive?? I think 4 ml is more like it. I got 5 ml out of an old sphygomanometer .. I don't think these Hg switches are available in
the US anymore. Al Gore shipped all our environmental hazards abroad along with our manufacturing industry.
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Antwain
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I should count myself lucky, I guess. I have several kilos of Hg that I inherited (ie 1.5*200mL bottles * 13.5g/mL ~ 4.05kg). Perhaps I should be
selling it if its worth that much.
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kilowatt
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If you happened to live in the UK, Labpak (now LP Chemical) sells it for £15.77/500g to anyone no questions asked. Of course the good old United
States is doing everything in its power to prevent you from obtaining mercury. If you have a legitimate company, you could buy it from Gallade or
somewhere for like $400/lb (haha, right).
I have found the most fruitful source to be old ignitrons. Of course it would be a sin to scrap a good/useable ignitron with known specs, besides the
fact that they are insanely expensive. However every now and then you can find some old ones for very cheap. I got about 30mL (about 1lb) from just
a couple old ignitrons. Still ended up costing about $80 for all that. At least I
could reuse the glass-to-metal sealed anodes from them to make a mercury arc rectifier or other cool thing if I wanted to.
If you happened to be lucky enough to come across a significant amount of cinnabar you could extract it from that by distillation with flowing air.
Be darn sure you have a well sealed iron retort and good condensers for that though, otherwise it could obviously be a risky process indeed.
Mercury contactors and tilt switches would be the next best bet, as others have said, followed by thermometers, barometers, etc. Even these things
are getting hard to find and mercury is becoming ever more a thing of taboo in the US.
[Edited on 15-10-2007 by kilowatt]
The mind cannot decide the truth; it can only find the truth.
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Fleaker
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Buying from a lab supplier is very expensive, but it's usually triple distilled.
You'd be surprised what some colleges want to get rid of (i.e. flasks of mercury) and some wouldn't mind letting a few pounds go if you can explain
what exactly you are going to do with it. Saves them money, but good luck finding someone like that these days (though Theodore Gray did).
Alternatively, you can talk to a furnace repairman, they replace thermostats all the time. When my air conditioner needed replaced, the repairman
replaced the thermostat. It had about 1.2mL of Hg in it. The repairman said that most people want him to take the switch. Well, over the years he'd
accumulated probably a few kilograms of it in a plastic bottle. He's just drop the glass switch in, and it'd usually break from the momentum of
hitting a pool of mercury covered with glass shards and metal debris. I've mentioned this before in the previous thread. Call one of these fellows,
act responsible, and offer to take it off their hands, perhaps for some money and/or case of beer. Seeing as that fellow is also one of my neighbors,
I'm sure he'd let me have it for free, but I've got enough mercury for what I do (which is mainly just to have).
Neither flask nor beaker.
"Kid, you don't even know just what you don't know. "
--The Dark Lord Sauron
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