Apogee Scientific, Inc. (Apogee) will lead a Team comprised of Southern Company Services, TXU, Tennessee Valley Authority, EPRI, URS Group, University of Illinois-Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS), Southern Research Institute (SRI), Calgon Carbon, and TDA Research, Inc., to evaluate a number of advanced sorbents for removing vapor-phase mercury from coal-fired flue gas that have minimal impact on by-product utilization and/or on existing particulate collection devices (PCD). The main objective of this program is to evaluate several advanced sorbents for removing mercury from coal-fired flue gas while posing minimal impact on plant operations through three advanced sorbent concepts: 1) Sorbents which minimize impact on concrete production through selective chemical passivation of activated carbon and use of non-carbon material, 2) sorbents that minimize baghouse pressure drop and ESP emissions, and 3) sorbents that can be recovered and reused.

Evaluation of the advanced sorbent materials will begin with manufacturing process optimization testing carried out in individual manufacturing facilities. Data on physical and chemical properties of different formulation will be collected and compared to mercury capacity data generated from bench-scale testing using simulated flue gas mixtures. These results will focus sorbent optimization efforts on increasing mercury capture performance and will ultimately select various formulations for testing in a slipstream device, EPRI's PoCT system, on actual flue gas at three host utility sites. Slipstream testing will quantify performance of promising sorbent formulations and will parametrically characterize performance of the best performing materials. Sorbent materials will be evaluated on three different coal types, bituminous, subbituminous, and Texas lignite, and on both ESP and baghouse particulate control device configurations using the slipstream device. Initial samples of fly ash-sorbent by-product will be collected from slipstream tests to evaluate impact on by-product utilization as well as separation of sorbent from fly ash.

The most promising sorbent materials from slipstream testing will be parametrically evaluated at two SRI pilot sites. Testing will evaluate the mercury capture performance of the sorbent material as well as quantifying any impact on particulate control device operation. An optimal material and injection rate will be selected for each pilot site and configuration for longer-term testing. Longer-term testing will be used to collect significant volumes of by-product material for full characterization testing.

Results from this program will demonstrate the viability of these advanced sorbent materials to remove gas-phase mercury from coal-fired flue gas, while limiting impacts on existing plant operations including by-product utilization.