Atmospheric mercury emissions from waste combustions measured by continuous monitoring devices

Abstract

Atmospheric mercury emissions have attracted great attention owing to adverse impact of mercury on human health and the ecosystem. Although waste combustion is one of major anthropogenic sources, estimated emission might have large uncertainty due to great heterogeneity of wastes. This study investigated atmospheric emissions of speciated mercury from the combustions of municipal solid wastes (MSW), sewage treatment sludge (STS), STS with waste plastics, industrial waste mixtures (IWM), waste plastics from construction demolition, and woody wastes using continuous monitoring devices. Reactive gaseous mercury was the major form at the inlet side of air pollution control devices in all combustion cases. Its concentration was 2.0-70.6 times larger than elemental mercury concentration. In particular, MSW, STS, and IWM combustions emitted higher concentration of reactive gaseous mercury. Concentrations of both gaseous mercury species varied greatly for all waste combustions excluding woody waste. Variation coefficients of measured data were nearly equal to or more than 1.0. Emission factors of gaseous elemental mercury, reactive gaseous mercury, and total mercury were calculated using continuous monitoring data. Total mercury emission factors are 0.30 g-Hg/Mg for MSW combustion, 0.21 g-Hg/Mg for STS combustion, 0.077 g-Hg/Mg for STS with waste plastics, 0.724 g-Hg/Mg for industrial waste mixtures, 0.028 g-Hg/Mg for waste plastic combustion, and 0.0026 g-Hg/Mg for woody waste combustion. All emission factors evaluated in this study were comparable or lower than other reported data. Emission inventory using old emission factors likely causes an overestimation.

Improving Flue Gas Mercury Removal in Waste Incinerators by Optimization of Carbon Injection Rate

“…When the b is 100 mg·Nm –3 , the MRE of CFBC and GFC was 66.3% and 78.0%, respectively. Under such circumstance, the mercury emission concentration of A-F plants was 3.1–26.4 μg·m –3 , most of which was higher than 0.05–4.56 μg·m –3 in Japan, 1.96–4.71 μg·m –3 in Korea, and 3.7 μg·m –3 in the U.S. − If China will further tighten the emission standard in future, the MRE is necessary to increase. When the MRE increases to 90%, the average AC injection value of should rise to 170 mg·Nm –3 for CFBC and 135 mg·Nm –3 for GFC, respectively on the basis of formula .…”

Mercury transformation and speciation in flue gases from anthropogenic emission sources: a critical review

“…The overall mercury removal efficiency of the APCDs for MSW incineration ranges from 60 % to over 99 % (Zhang et al, 2008;Takahashi et al, 2012). Previous studies in Europe and the USA indicated that the Hg 2+ proportion in the exhausted flue gas ranges from 75 to 85 % (Pacyna and Münch, 1991;Carpi, 1997).…”

“…Kim et al (2010a) tested two medical waste incinerators with SD-FGD+FF+WS and got the Hg 0 proportion to be 43.9 and 96.8 % respectively. A Japanese study showed that an industrial waste incinerator with WS and wet ESP has the Hg 0 proportion of 92.7 % (Takahashi et al, 2012). Based on field measurements in eight MSW incinerators in China, Chen et al (2013) found that average Hg 2+ proportion in flue gas from the outlet of GFC+SD-FGD+ACI+FF is 96 %, while that for CFBC+SD-FGD+ACI+FF is 64 %.…”

“…Takaoka et al (2010) conducted field measurements in seven crematories in Japan, two of them without any APCDs, one with ESP and four with FF for particle control. Advanced APCDs such as catalytic reactor and activated carbon filter are installed in three of the tested crematories.…”

An intelligent algorithm for accurate forecasting of short term solid waste generation

“…Production and manufacturing of these products also generate a lot of solid waste. For the fact that consumption seems to be ever increasing, waste production has become an important issue and their disposal is a big concern, that may threaten the sustainable development of society (Takahashi et al, 2012). Factors like economic development, urbanization, living and education standards improvement and countries' infrastructures have caused an increase in amount of generated waste and complexity of municipal solid waste.…”