Product Features

Mercury is a silvery-white, shiny, heavy liquid that evaporates at room temperature. Metallic mercury has reducing properties and exists in two oxidation states: +2 and +1. Mercury is an inert metal and reacts slowly with oxygen, but it reacts with sulfur when mixed and ground to form non-toxic mercuric sulfide (HgS). This reaction can be used to clean up spilled mercury. Mercury is insoluble in reducing acids and alkalis, but soluble in oxidizing acids such as nitric acid and hot concentrated sulfuric acid. Mercury is a highly neurotoxic element; its elemental form and many of its compounds exhibit varying degrees of toxicity, leading to chronic poisoning.

Product Applications

Mercury’s most common applications are in the manufacture of industrial chemicals and in electronic and electrical products. It is also used in thermometers, especially for measuring high temperatures. Increasingly, gaseous mercury is still used in the manufacture of fluorescent lamps, while many other applications have been phased out due to health and safety concerns, replaced by the much more expensive but less toxic Galinstan alloy. Other uses of mercury include:

1. Extracting gold from its minerals, hence its frequent use in gold mining.
2. Making instruments such as barometers and diffusion pumps.
3. Gaseous mercury is used in mercury vapor lamps.
4. Manufacturing liquid mirror telescopes. These telescopes use a rotating liquid to form a parabolic shape, which serves as the primary mirror for astronomical observation; they cost about one-third the price of ordinary telescopes.
5. Mercury switches, pesticides, in the production of chlorine and potassium hydroxide, as a preservative, and as electrodes, batteries, and catalysts in some electrolytic devices.