Experimental study on fly ash capture mercury in flue gas

Systematic experiments were conducted on a fixed-bed reactor to investigate the interaction between fly ash and mercury, the results implied that fly ash can capture mercury effectively. Among different fly ashes, the unburned carbon in the FA2 and FA3 fly ashes has the highest mercury capture capacity, up to 10.3 and 9.36 μg/g, respectively, which is close to that of commercial activated carbon. There is no obvious relationship between mercury content and carbon content or BET surface area of fly ash. Petrography classification standard was applied to distinguish fly ash carbon particles. Carbon content is not the only variable that controls mercury capture on fly ash, there are likely significant differences in the mercury capture capacities of the various carbon forms. Mercury capture capacity mainly depends on the content of anisotropy carbon particles with porous network structure.