Improved Sorbent for Removing Mercury from Hazardous Waste Incinerators

The proposed research effort will develp a new, lower-cost and more environmentally benign sorbent system to remove mercury from the flue gases produced by waste combustion incinerators. Current removal systems use dry sorbent injection of activated carbon, which is collected in the fabric filter for disposal. These systerms have low capital costs because they use existing capital equipment to capture the mercury, but the use of carbon or modified carbon sorbents significantly increases the operating costs, and raises serious safety and environmental issues of its own. TDA will prepare new sorbents and evaluate them to select the best formulation. We will identify the optimum operating conditions for the sorbent and evaluate the impact of other flue gas components on its performanc. The Phase i effort will also include an engineering analysis to asses the cost of mercury removal with the new sorbent technology. The sorbents that we will develp to remove mercury from hazardous waste incinerators could also be applied to mercury abatement at coal-fired electric utilities. The market size is very large; such power plants account for 60% of the electroc power generated in the U.S. In addition, the same technology would be applicable to the much smaller application of mercury abatement in municipal waste incinerators and waste-to-energy facilities. These facilities are becoming more prevalent in the U.S., and are particularly common in Europe, where trouble-prone carbon packed beds are now used for mercury control.