Evaluation of MerCAP for Power Plant Mercury Control
This report is submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE-NETL) as part of Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-03NT41993, 'Evaluation of EPRI's MerCAP{trademark} Technology for Power Plant Mercury Control'. This project has investigated the mercury removal performance of EPRI's Mercury Capture by Amalgamation Process (MerCAP{trademark}) technology. Test programs were conducted to evaluate gold-based MerCAP{trademark} at Great River Energy's Stanton Station Unit 10 (Site 1), which fired both North Dakota lignite (NDL) and Power River Basin (PRB) coal during the testing period, and at Georgia Power's Plant Yates Unit 1 (Site 2) [Georgia Power is a subsidiary of The Southern Company] which fires a low sulfur Eastern bituminous coal. Additional tests were carried out at Alabama Power's Plant Miller, which fires Powder River Basin Coal, to evaluate a carbon-based MerCAP{trademark} process for removing mercury from flue gas downstream of an electrostatic precipitator [Alabama Power is a subsidiary of The Southern Company]. A full-scale gold-based sorbent array was installed in the clean-air plenum of a single baghouse compartment at GRE's Stanton Station Unit 10, thereby treating 1/10th of the unit's exhaust gas flow. The substrates that were installed were electroplated gold screens oriented parallel to the flue gas flow. The sorbent array was initially installed in late August of 2004, operating continuously until its removal in July 2006, after nearly 23 months. The initial 4 months of operation were conducted while the host unit was burning North Dakota lignite (NDL). In November 2004, the host unit switched fuel to burn Powder River Basin (PRB) subbituminous coal and continued to burn the PRB fuel for the final 19 months of this program. Tests were conducted at Site 1 to evaluate the impacts of flue gas flow rate, sorbent plate spacing, sorbent pre-cleaning and regeneration, and spray dryer operation on MerCAP{trademark} performance. At Site 2, a pilot-scale array was installed in a horizontal reactor chamber designed to treat approximately 2800 acfm of flue gas obtained from downstream of the plant's flue gas desulfurization (FGD) system. The initial MerCAP{trademark} array was installed at Plant Yates in January 2004, operating continuously for several weeks before a catastrophic system failure resulting from a failed flue gas fan. A second MerCAP{trademark} array was installed in July 2006 and operated for one month before being shut down for a reasons pertaining to system performance and host site scheduling. A longer-term continuous-operation test was then conducted during the summer and fall of 2007. Tests were conducted to evaluate the impacts of flue gas flow rate, sorbent space velocity, and sorbent rinsing frequency on mercury removal performance. Detailed characterization of treated sorbent plates was carried out in an attempt to understand the nature of reactions leading to excessive corrosion of the substrate surfaces.
- Research Organization:
- Urs Group Incorporated
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC26-03NT41993
- OSTI ID:
- 962932
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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