Experimental study on flue gas emission removed by modified activated carbons

Elemental mercury emission from power station is hard to dissolve in water so that it is difficult to remove. Applying activated carbon or other sorbents to capture mercury in the flue gas has brought up wide attention. In order to develop coal-fired flue gas mercury sorbent which is effective with low consumption, CO₂ activation and ZnCl₂ impregnated and other methods have been conducted to modify the powdered activated carbon to attain modified activated carbon adsorbent. A lab-scale multiphase flow reactor has been designed and adopted to evaluate mercury adsorption efficiency by the modified activated carbon. The efficiencies of modified activated carbon are quite different. The possible reason is that the activated carbon modified with different materials had different surface structure. During the adsorption process, besides physical adsorption, there exists chemical adsorption.