Hi,

Long ago, I was reading a book "Aquaculture in Sundarban Delta: Its perspective and assessment" by P Ray for different purpose than yours. While going through the book i had found some information about your query. It is also available online to read through Google books. Hope this book may fulfil the interest partially.

Regards

Gautam

Thank you dear P.K. Goutam.

Dear Shankhadeep,

if you don't know that, nobody can help you. - However I was involved over many years in the remediation of about 10 chlorine plants, using the amalgam process with mercury, in Germany and Middle East (also Australia).

In soils contaminated with mercury biological processes result in organic mercury compounds with alkyl or acryl groups like methyl mercury anion [CH3 Hg]+ and diphenyl mercury Hg(C6H5)2. The proportion of methyl-Hg of the overall-Hg in sediments and soils is generally between 0.1 and 1.5 %. It has to be assumed that the concentration of methyl-Hg in soil is affected by the balance of methylation and de-methylation (Schuster 1991)

I also observed in all these years, that also the grain size distribution of soil and the amount of clay and silt has an influence on the allocation of mercury. Unfortunately I published (maybe) in the wrong language and in the wrong journals.

ANSWER: Biologically available mercury might be also in the range of up to 1.5 Mass-% of the total mercury and in case that silt and clay is available you will find the water-soluble Hg-compounds in this fraction. Metallic mercury you'll find attached to the fine sands, accordingly.

kind regards

Ruediger

Sorry I forgot to mention:

In one of my earlier conference papers available on this platform (even in English): Treatment and Disposal of NORM-Contaminated Oil Field Waste, you will find in Tab. 1 an overview about metal mercury compared to organo-mercury compounds in soil from former chlorine plants in Buna Schkopau/Germany.

kind regards

Ruediger