Is whoever owns the problem willing to ask Building Consent for advice, or for a pointer to whoever in your region does administer the regs. dealing with the storage of hazardous substances? I'm only asking as it'd be sad to for the work to fail a likely inspection.
If there's not too much of it, then I would suggest stoneware bottles are a bit tougher than glass, and ceramic shower trays for standing them in, with real cork plugs sprayed/painted with intumescent paint in the plug-holes. Moderately fireproof, but not resistant to your madman with a sledge hammer. But there are limits to how safe anything can be made, just so long as reasonable precautions are taken.
Glass. Or any reasonable metal, surely?
The enforcement authority will be consulted before any work is done. I think a row of bricks on the floor may be sufficient.
Errm, have you got 'elf and safety advice about this? That surface of mercury presents a significant risk of exposure to mercury vapour.
That much mercury should also be bunded, since you really, really don't want to risk having it drop on the floor.
It would really help if you gave all the facts instead of allowing them to trickle out bit by bit like the mercury.
containment.
I'd suggest that the best practical solution would be a GRP moulding which is strong enough to hold the weight of mercury. Since you're looking at a disaster the recovery of the mercury in good condition seems to be secondary to containing it.
To survive an earthquake will require a combination of strength and flexibility and a composite seems your best choice. Inevitably over time any containment will become contaminated with dust, water and grease and not much you can do about that.
I'd suggest that the containment should be buttressed since the walls will have to support a lot of weight and you don't want them collapsing. It may be sensible to make the tray as double skinned, ply or balsa cored and with a very good interior gel coat finish.
If you're concerned about interaction between mercury and the material use then you could make a small container and test that.
A sensible alternative would be polypropylene. There are many businesses used to working in heat-welded polypropylene to make water tanks for boats (for example) but I'm not sure that the welds would hold if the container were full of mercury rather than water.
All plastics or composites will age and become brittle over time. Usually such aging is accelerated by ozone which I would expect to be present in any electrical installation of significant size/age.
Why? What makes you think "professionals" are any better? Mercury spills aren't that hard to deal with, and require care and attention to detail to get the last dark corners. Hazchem professionals are paid a pittance to do it as quickly as possible. They're neither thorough nor conscientious.
If you want to trap any spillage, mercury handling is sometimes done over a bed of powdered yellow sulphur - the usual entrapment agent for mercury.
As you seem to be looking at a large shallow tray of mercury with an exposed surface, its not the spills I'd worry about but the vapour.
DC rectifiers for your trams? I regret to say I broke up many of these when I was a kid - recycled mercury was my pocket money
I'd keep it in its rectifiers, mount the rectifiers in a good steel cage and shock-mount the steel cage. If you can find the right '50s manual on-line (it's out there, I've read it) there's some stuff on this for US submarines. Use a spiral of wire rope, with clamping bars on either side - a common military shockmount design and easy to home manufacture.
Underneath you want a catch tank. This should be flexible against earthquake, so something like a big builder's mortar mixing tray. I don't think it needs to be fireproof, you can probably control the risk of fire by putting the rectifiers in a concrete blockwork shed with nothing in there to burn. If you have to though, just put a further steel or smooth concrete tray beneath this (seal it first with waterglass) and don't couple the concrete too firmly into the ground.
Keep powdered yellow sulphur (garden supplies) on hand for spill cleanup.
Mercury doesn't react with iron but it will react with zinc - so galvanised steel is out but steel should be OK. (It also doesn't react with platinum but that might be a little too expensive).
Tony
I have a few small bottles of Mercury form Victorian times .. all ornate glass bottles. (old Doctors Surgery - closed for years) Seems that glass would be the way if you need it fireproof.
Make a 'glass tank' toughened glass in a steel supported frame.
Design to take weight, plus it's fire proof.
In the labs
Makes it seem a bit different ... when we were in school we could dip a penny in acid to clean it and then dip in Mercury to make it look silver. Everyone was encouraged to press their fingers into Mercury to see how much resistance there was compared to water.
Any spillages we had to collect using filter papers ... brushing mercury drops onto to paper with our fingers !
I suppose a school of kids walking around with Mercury coated pennies would now be an H&S issue.
In message , Rick Hughes writes
We did exactly the same. It's surprising we're not all jibbering idiots. [Maybe some of us are!]
When I started reading this thread it brought back memories of secondary school science lessons (1969 to 1974) where, being kids and not necessarily being bothered about rules and regulations, we would pour the mercury into our hands and just spend ages, pouring it from hand to hand, being amazed by its feel and behaviour. Then, as the bell rang for the end of the lesson, it was break time and off to the tuck shop for a handful of Jammie Dodgers - held in and eaten from the same hands that, just minutes before, had held the mercury - yet here we are, now aged 53, and none of us any worse for our experiences :-)
At most there would be 1 mm of mercury on the concrete floor, so no real weight problem. The mercury won't be re-used, just cleaned up by someone who has the qualifications to do so. I'll be a long way away!
I didn't like the idea of a polypropylene tray as there is a fair bit of heat and high voltage around.
The mercury desn't want to soak into the concrete or the raised edge around it. I was thinking of a two-pot paint or a vinyl liner. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are very unlikely. More likely is some kind of electrical failure that cracks the glass container.
I don't think mercury will like being 1mm deep (high?). Because of its very high surface tension it will tend to 'puddle' in deeper, smaller pools - maybe 2 or 3mm deep.
Phil
Yes indeed, that's what I would be worrying about too. Agree about the sulphur also.
In industry I believe that the usual stuff for keeping mercury in is cast iron. Definitely not aluminium which it will dissolve.
Personally I'd say that anyone who doesn't know what to keep mercury in is unlikely to be a fit person to work with several square metres of mercury. It's bloody toxic and will need a housing that's designed, built and signed off by professionals. Anyone even considering a DIY project using mercury should probably be certified themselves.
Very definitely. When the safety rules changed my secondary school had to take the lab floors up so that the room could be decontaminated. Working with mercury is very much like working with asbestos.
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