The removal of mercury from water by open chain ligands containing multiple sulfurs

Mercury pollution is a serious challenge faced by environmental chemists over the world. For several years now, our group has been developing new compounds to precipitate and thereby remove mercury from water. In this paper, we present a new family of alkyl thiol mercury chelates to add to the aromatic ligands we have previously reported. These new compounds are effective at precipitating mercury from water and with an excess of the best compound, removal is quantitative. Furthermore, the precipitates are stable and released little to no mercury back into solution during leaching studies.