Controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants
- Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA (United States)
Increasingly stringent US federal and state limits on mercury emissions form coal-fired power plants demand optimal mercury control technologies. This article summarises the successful removal of mercury emissions achieved with activated carbon injection and boiler bromide addition, technologies nearing commercial readiness, as well as several novel control concepts currently under development. It also discusses some of the issues standing in the way of confident performance and cost predictions. In testing conducted on western coal-fired units with fabric filters or TOXECON to date, ACI has generally achieved mercury removal rates > 90%. At units with ESPs, similar performance requires brominated ACI. Alternatively, units firing western coals can use boiler bromide addition to increase flue gas mercury oxidation and downstream capture in a wet scrubber, or to enhance mercury removal by ACI. At eastern bituminous fired units with ESPs, ACI is not as effective, largely due to SO{sub 3} resulting from the high sulfur content of the coal or the use of SO{sub 3} flue gas conditioning to improve ESP performance. 7 refs., 3 figs.
- OSTI ID:
- 21240382
- Journal Information:
- EM, Journal Name: EM; ISSN 1088-9981
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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