Mercury re-emission in flue gas multipollutants simultaneous absorption system.

Abstract

Recently, simultaneous removal of SO2, NOx and oxidized mercury in wet flue gas desulfurization (WFGD) scrubber has become a research focus. Mercury re-emission in traditional WFGD system has been widely reported due to the reduction of oxidized mercury by sulfite ions. However, in multipollutants simultaneous absorption system, the formation of a large quantity of nitrate and nitrite ions as NOx absorption might also affect the reduction of oxidized mercury in the aqueous absorbent. As such, this paper studied the effects of nitrate and nitrite ions on mercury re-emission and its related mechanism. Experimental results revealed that the nitrate ions had neglected effect on mercury re-emission while the nitrite ions could greatly change the mercury re-emission behaviors. The nitrite ions could initially improve the Hg(0)-emission through the decomposition of HgSO3NO2(-), but with a further increase in the concentration, they would then inhibit the reduction of bivalent mercury owing to the formation of Hg-nitrite complex [Hg(NO2)x(2-x)]. In addition, the subsequent addition of Cl(-) could further suppress the Hg(0) emission, where the formation of a stable Hg-SO3-NO2-Cl complex was assumed to be the main reason for such strong inhibition effect.