Evaporation of Mercury from CCFLs during Recycling of LCD Television Sets

The element mercury is one of the most hazardous substances known. Still, it is common in the air, water, soil and products we use in our daily life. LCD TVs is one of these products. To prevent the mercury in the LCD TVs from polluting the environment, the LCD TVs are recycled. This is done through automatic shredding or manual disassembly where the mercury can spread in the work environment, the process equipment or to the recycled material. This is due to broken CCFLs in the LCD TVs which contain the mercury. The aim of this paper is to investigate, through a literature review and an empirical study, the amount of mercury released into the work environment due to broken CCFLs from LCD TVs. In the literature review there were found the amount of mercury other researchers has found in CCFLs from LCD TVs, and also where the mercury was found. In the empirical study, the amount of mercury in a LCD due to broken CCFLs were measured and validates the results from other researcher and states that the mercury is difficult to predict