Emission Reductions at a Chinese Power Station

Abstract

Growing attention is being placed on the adverse health effects of fine particulates, with the haze and smog through Hong Kong and Mainland China becoming a major concern for local authorities. With a large proportion of these emissions originating from the smoke stacks of power stations and other large industrial process’s, a cost effective solution to this pollution is to install an Indigo Agglomerator. Through electrostatic and fluidic methods the Indigo Agglomerator has been proven to be extremely effective at reducing opacity by 50%–80% and mass emissions by up to 50%. An Indigo Agglomerator was installed at a Chinese Power Station during an outage in December 2007. The 300 MW boiler has 2 side by side Electro-Static Precipitators (ESP’s) with the Indigo Agglomerator installed prior to one of the ESP’s. The Indigo Agglomerator and Power Station have been operating since January the 1^st with a limited number of outages for inspections of the Agglomerator and ESP Particle size testing was performed by Indigo Technologies at the inlet and outlet of the Agglomerator as well as the inlet and outlet of the ESP’s. A historical analysis of ESP emissions was also performed, comparing before and after Agglomerator emissions against each other. These tests show significant reductions in particles less than 5 micron across the Agglomerator and consequently across the ESP giving rise to large reductions in emissions and opacity.

The Indigo Agglomerator is installed directly upstream of the ESP in a rebuilt section of the existing inlet ducting. The Agglomerator can be installed in either vertical or horizontal flow configurations, with limited space and lifting access giving a flexibility of installation options and virtual zero additional footprint requirements.