Liquid Mercury

Hi all

Does anyone know a supplier of Mercury in Perth? (and not the dreaded black anchor outboards)

cheers

Jim

You can buy it illegally if you ask around...I would not recommend that.

You buy it from a chem supplier in SA...but you need a license to buy it. Unless you have had plenty of experience in a gold room or battery it is very unlikely you will get a license.

hi hotrock some of the old hot water heaters have a mercury switch in thembut be careful when burning off plenty of ventilation

cueite wrote:hi hotrock  some of the old hot water heaters have a mercury switch in thembut be careful when burning off plenty of ventilation

so you have never heard of a retort to catch the mercury and reuse it, don't be an environmental vandal, burning off mercury like the old timer did is not good advice.

i havent burnt of mercury since the 60s that was the only way we new how in those daysdont jump in unles you know the facts john

Back in the 80's you could get permits to buy stuff such as HF acid and mercury. I had a permit for HF, not easy to get, but I used to work for BP Oil and had 80 tonnes of it work with!! So I knew more than they did about safety with HF! Never had a mercury one.

But these things are now almost impossible to get these days. Try the WA Health Dept and ask for "Poisons Permits" section. They were the people that I dealt with to get my HF Permit - which has now lapsed.

W

Hi All,

Just some more facts for you, working in the alumina industry for years and they use caustic for production purposes, when this goes thrru the digesters the mercury vapours are condensed in traps at ground level and mercury pours over the concrete spill pad

This was from a source of caustic which doesnt meen that all caustic produced has this problem, with all respects Aussie au a liitle bit dispersed from Johns idea wouldn't even scratch the surface of what the big boys do every day

Note: we would be sniffing these mercury vapours just working in the area

Hi John

Cheers,Ron

cueite wrote:i havent burnt of mercury since the 60s  that was the only way we new how in those daysdont jump in unles you know the facts  john

Fair enough John, I really only meant to be pointing out the supposed better way of doing it these days, I could have been a little more polite ay.


Ron fluro

Somehow the "big boys" seem to be able to do whatever they want, now the authorities tell us how dangerous mercury is bla bla but I remember in the science class in high school the teacher handed out mercury for us all to handle and play with, we put some in our pockets so we could play with it during lunch time, can you imagine the teachers doing that king of thing now.  

And another interesting thing was at TAFE doing the Boiler Makers trade we were given ASBESTOS gloves to pick up hot metal after oxy cutting, can you imagine that happening now.  

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/10x-Glass-Electric-Mercury-Tilt-Switch-0-5A-20V-PZ-101-Work-Angle-10-New/161772640333?hash=item25aa66984d:g:e2EAAOSw9N1Vsd-t

you would have to buy a fair few haha

Flouro wrote:Hi All,

Just some more facts for you, working in the alumina industry for years and they use caustic for production purposes, when this goes thrru the digesters the mercury vapours are condensed in traps at ground level and mercury pours over the concrete spill pad

Cheers,Ron

Hi Flouro,
Don't want a shooting match with you but you are partly right and partly wrong.
The Bayer process extracting Alumina from Bauxite does produce mercury in the Digestion section, however it is the bauxite not caustic that does contain traces of metals such as beryllium, cadmium, arsenic, lead, manganese, chromium, nickel & mercury.
And yes the mercury is collected from the vapour traps. Until they was caught several employees contributed greatly to their Christmas Fund selling the mercury, approx 1 litre/month.
Others retrieved discarded instrument level switches and opened them to retrieve the mercury.
Bauxite is the most common ore on the planet, the Bayer Process was invented and patented in 1887 by Austrian scientist Karl Josef Bayer to extract Aluminium. This process has changed little since that time. (Clever old B****d)
Approximately 3 tonnes of bauxite refines 1 tonne of alumina, 2 tonnes of alumina smelts into one tonne of aluminium.
In the Darling Ranges in WA billions of tonnes of bauxite lays in and around our jarrah forests, bauxite mining began in WA around the early 60's.
BHP became very concerned because their monopoly making steel cans was soon overhauled by as we all except today, aluminium cans.

Hi Pete,

Shootin match, you take all the fun out of it Pete...with my lot we never used to get it but a new batch from a different source and we had mercury everywhere but your source may be totally different than ours and my lot was at Worsely Refinery 18yrs ago

CheersRon

Some more info on mercury located here
http://www.prospectorsparadise.com/basement-chemistry/using-mercury/

hi ron and your lovely lady im back in cue now for good 18 months in perth nearly finished me glad to be backwill catch up one day when your passing through cheer s all john

Hi John,

Still breathin eh John, no worries we'll be up your way soon every couple of weeks we call into Cue to do our washin so probably will catch up

Cheers,Ron and Sherri