A flue gas desulfurization device and process were developed and tested in this study. The process used an electrostatic spraying absorber (ESA) as the reactor, where SO2 was absorbed into an aqueous slurry of reactive Ca(OH)2. The absorption process was analyzed by using the two-film theory of mass-transfer. Both the liquid and gas side resistances were important, and the absorption rate was controlled by a combination of both gas-film and liquid-film diffusion controls. The ESA characteristics were investigated between applied voltages from −10 to 10 kV at various slurry flow rates. The SO2 removal efficiency was independent of the polarity of the applied voltage. A slightly higher efficiency was obtained with the conduction charging configuration than with the induction charging configuration. A model of external mass-transfer with a chemical enhancement factor was proposed for estimation of the absorption efficiency; the theoretical SO2 removal efficiency obtained was compared with the experimental data.

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