Mercury Control with Regenerative Activated Coke Technology

Many issues face coal fired utilities with respect to environmental demands, some based on regulations and others based on local pressures. These include increasingly stringent control of criteria pollutants, anticipated federal and state requirements for mercury control, issues revolving around water use and water disposal, plume visibility, overall plant thermal efficiency and the future considerations for climate change issues. For utilities that burn PRB and other low sulfur coals, an exemplary reference project is the re-construction of the Isogo Power Station by J-Power. This project replace two vintage coal fired units, and within the same site, more than doubled generation capacity to 2x600MW with ultrasupercritical boilers with SCR, ESPs, and second generation ReACTtm technology to provide low emissions from the high efficiency coal fired boiler plant that allow the plant to operate as the cleanest coal fired power plant in the world in terms of emissions intensity and at levels that are equivalent to natural gas fired power plants. Isogo Unit #1 has been in operation since 2005 and Unit #2 started operation in mid 2009. J-Power Entech has recently licensed the ReACT technology to Hamon Research-Cottrell. The multi-pollutant control ReACT technology is a completely dry scrubbing system based on adsorption of SO2, SO3, Hg and NOx on activated coke in a moving bed, with subsequent regeneration of the coke for return to the absorber, reduction of NOx to N2, and production of saleable by-product sulfuric acid.