Operational experience of the industrial plant for electron beam flue gas treatment

Abstract

Electron beam flue gas treatment technology is one of the most advanced technologies among new generation processes for air pollution control. The process, which has been developed in Japan, the United States, Germany and Poland allows simultaneous removal of SO 2 and NO x with high efficiency and by-product generated can be applied as fertilizer. Two industrial installations using this technology have been constructed in the world, one in China and the second in Poland. Other plants are constructed in Japan and China. Chinese installation is mostly SO 2 removal oriented (since the NO x emission limits in China are not imposed up to now), so Polish plant one is as a matter of fact the first installation for simultaneous desulfurization and denitrification of flue gases. The plant located in EPS Pomorzany in Szczecin treats the flue gases emitted from two Benson boilers of 65 MW e and 100 MW th each. The flue gases of maximum flow of 270 000 N m 3/h are irradiated by four accelerators of 700 keV electron energy and 260 kW beam power each. Description of the plant and the results obtained have been presented in this paper. The plant has been in operation for more than 2500 h (5500 h including one accelerator set operation). Removal efficiencies up to 95% for SO 2 and up to 70% for NO x were achieved. Several thousand tons of the by-product was sold in the form of NPK fertilizer. Economically, the technology is competitive with the conventional ones.