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Photochemical Removal of Gaseous Elemental Mercury in a Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Reactor

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Abstract

The plasma process has the potential to serve as a low cost mercury oxidation technology that will facilitate elemental mercury removal in a downstream of Flue Gas Desulfurization system. The performance of the main gas constituents, such as H2O, O2 and HCl on elemental mercury oxidation under plasma atmosphere was investigated in simulated flue gas. Experiments were carried out in a dielectric barrier discharge reactor operated at 140 °C. Photochemical effects of nanocrystalline titania on oxidation of elemental mercury were also tested. The results indicated that both H2O and O2 promote the oxidation of elemental mercury significantly. Active radicals generated by ionization, such as O, O2 and OH, play the crucial roles in oxidation process. The presence of HCl in N2/O2 stream in plasma system is a very effective way of oxidizing elemental mercury, the nearly complete oxidation of elemental mercury was observed by 4 kV of applied voltage only. The best photocatalytic activity of anatase TiO2 which was calcined at 600 °C was found in our tests. Compared with the plasma process alone, the oxidation efficiency increased 18.7–26.3 % with the addition of photocatalyst.

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Acknowledgments

This project was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (50976049) and Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK2011788).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy and Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210042, Jiangsu Province, China

    Hongmin Yang, Hao Liu, Hao Wu & Meng Wang

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  1. Hongmin Yang
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  2. Hao Liu
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  3. Hao Wu
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  4. Meng Wang
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Correspondence to Hongmin Yang.

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Yang, H., Liu, H., Wu, H. et al. Photochemical Removal of Gaseous Elemental Mercury in a Dielectric Barrier Discharge Plasma Reactor. Plasma Chem Plasma Process 32, 969–977 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-012-9393-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11090-012-9393-9

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