Citation:

VARMA, R. S., J. LEE, T. C. KEENER, AND Y. JU. NOVEL MERCURY OXIDANT AND SORBENT FOR MERCURY EMISSIONS CONTROL FROM COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS. Presented at 37th Mid-Atlantic Industrial & Hazardous Waste Conferenc, Cincinnati, OH, March 21 - 23, 2007.

Impact/Purpose:

To inform the public.

Description:

The authors have successfully developed novel efficient and cost-effective sorbent and oxidant for removing mercury from power plant flue gases. These sorbent and oxidant offer great promise for controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants burning a wide range of coals including bituminous coals, sub-bituminous, and lignite coals. A preliminary economic analysis from the bench-scale test results shows that this new sorbent will be thermally more stable and cheaper in comparison with any mercury sorbents currently available in the marketplace. In addition to the sorbent, an excellent elemental mercury (Hg(0)) oxidant has also been developed, and will enable coal-fired power plants equipped with wet scrubbers to simultaneously control their mercury emissions as well as their sulfur oxides emissions. This will work by converting all elemental mercury to an oxidized form which will be removed by the wet scrubber. This will result in significant cost savings for mercury emissions control to the atmosphere, and will help in keeping electric costs low. The sorbent and oxidant will benefit from the utilization of a waste stream from an established industry, and would thus be environmentally beneficial to both industries. The sorbent also demonstrated thermal stability up to 350 C, suggesting a possibility of an application in pulverized coal-fired power plants equipped with hot-side electrostatic precipitators, and coal gasification plants

Record Details: