Environmentally Clean Process for Removing Mercury from Coal and Coal Burning Plant Flue Gas and Solutions

The present invention provides for the removal of mercury from aqueous solutions utilizing a mer protein. After the mer protein has been expressed and isolated, or alternatively using the native mer protein complex, either can be used as a chelating agent to remove mercury from any aqueous mercury containing environment. The mer protein may be used in a solution to bind mercury where the solution is suspended within a removable apparatus or the mer protein may be reversibly attached to a removal apparatus as a mer ligand. The mer ligand is attached to a removal apparatus by any conventional ligand attachment method. The advantage of the mer protein is that the mercury binding is exclusive in regards to other metals.

Intellectual Property Status
Disclosure 351. Patent Pending

Inventors
Richard Squire, Ranjith Munasinghe, Milson Luce, Jay W. Wiedemann