Hi Julio,

Yes, liquid natural elemental mercury does occur. A well known source is the production of elemental Hg with natural gas production which then condenses. A lesser known source is the production of elemental mercury during in (deeply) anoxic aquifers where Hg2+ (and Hg+ for that matter) can start to act as an electron acceptor. This process results in the production of liquid elemental mercury.

Hope this helps! If you're interested I have a few articles Hg contamination and treatment in my profile.

Best regards,

Niels

Dear Niels, thank you very much for your kind answer. I will check your profile for the articles you mention, thank you very much in advance.

Elemental Hg is very very sticky. It is in fact a well know problem for analytical chemist as memory effects of mercury are found in analysis long after doing one experiment. Sometimes moths after having performed an experiment for example in ICP-MS (if plastic ware and glassware are not properly washed)

This means that most sources of elemental Hg are likely to be found when Hg is adsorbed to a matrix (being the matrix almost about anything, plastic, glass, soil, tissue, etc)

This Hg form is still elemental but strongly bound to the matrix and I am afraid not anymore nice liquid mercury

Hope this helps

You're welcome Julio, hope you're able to make some progress with your interesting quest. If you have further questions or need some help, let me know. Curious about the root of your quest... distinction of natural vs. contaminated for legal purposes?

In addition, one aspect on natural mercury that came up in a recent discussion on LinkedIn was also it's use in mineral prospecting (https://goo.gl/8xWpo9).

It is very likely elemental mercury can be found back in its original elemental even after volatilization. There are enough evidence to prove that mercury deposits can be found in moss and lichens near contaminated areas.

Dear people, thank you very much for your kind answers, this has been very helpful for my research purposes.

In response to Niels, the origin of my research is because there are some locations in Guatemala in which supposedly there are these natural deposits of mercury inside caves. This easily available mercury is being collected by local people and traded even in 40 gallon barrels. But this is information from very informal sources but still, there are several witnesses of this actually happening. WIll let you know about the updates of this research.

Regards!

Thanks Julio for the update, very interesting! Good luck with your research,

Niels

Dear Julio

to my knowledge pure mercury is a rare side product when digging for certain metals or coal.

Perhaps a glance to "Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry" might help. There you'll find an article on "Mercury, Mercury Alloys, and Mercury Compounds" by Matthias Simon, Peter Jönk, Gabriele Wühl-Couturier, Stefan Halbach. doi: 10.1002/14356007.a16_269.pub2

In case of need I will send you a copy of this article (to avoid problems with copy rights, please let me know your email address).

Regards

Nikolaus Hannoschöck

Dear Nikolaus,

Thank you very much for your kind answer. Will send you my contact via private message.

Regards

Julio Vargas