Testing of a mercury continuous emission monitor at three coal-fired electric utilities
Conference
·
OSTI ID:20002208
With the decrease in mercury emissions from other sources, recent attention has focused on mercury emissions from coal-fired utility boilers. Although there are several wet-chemistry methods validated for measuring mercury in combustion flue gases, these methods are difficult to perform, costly, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. Also, the results typically are not available for several days. Therefore, development of a continuous emission monitor (CEM) requiring minimal operator input to provide near-real-time mercury emission data that could be used as feedback control for mercury control systems is attractive. Several on-line analyzers have been developed primarily for measuring mercury emissions from waste incinerators. However, application of these mercury CEMs to the flue gas from coal-fired boilers presents significant challenges. Typically, the flue gas mercury concentration is less than 10 {micro}g/Nm{sup 3} and contains fine particulate that must be removed prior to mercury measurement. Also, the presence of acid gases including HCl, SO{sub 2}, and NOx{sub x}may interfere with the analyzers. Previous tests at the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) pilot-scale combustor evaluated several mercury CEMs. The results showed that the Perkin Elmer MERCEM, PS Analytical Sir Galahad, and Semtech Hg 2000 had the capability of measuring total vapor-phase mercury in coal combustion flue gas within 20% of the wet-chemistry methods. Since these tests were of short duration, additional field testing was necessary to resolve questions regarding accuracy, reliability, and maintainability. Therefore the Semtech Hg 2000 and a mercury conversion system developed at the EERC were evaluated at three different coal-fired utilities.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20002208
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-990608--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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