Multi-Billion Dollar a Year Market to Reduce Mercury in Air and Gas

Mar 17 2016

Mercury reduction is the biggest growth market in air pollution control. Very small quantities of mercury emitted to the air end up in the water and then in humans where serious health problems can result A few ppb in natural gas pipelines accelerate deterioration of equipment and the pipe.

Regulations to limit these pollutants are still evolving. The U.S. has led the way in coal-fired power. This creates an opportunity for U.S. based suppliers to market their solutions to the international market. It is easy to take a myopic view of one industry and make strategy decisions. However, if one considers potential cross pollination among industries and geographies, a whole different picture arises. The U.S. is not the leader in cement, waste-to-energy, natural gas or non-ferrous applications. It is a co-leader in sewage sludge incineration. The leading technologies vary industry to industry. There is the potential for major technology changes based on technologies developed for another industry.

	Coal-fired Power	Waste-to- Energy	Sewage Sludge Incineration	Cement	Natural Gas	Non- Ferrous
Activated Carbon Injection	Widely used in coal-fired power and WTE where it can be injected ahead of fabric filters. Use in scrubber slurries is promising but less understood.
Activated Carbon Pellets	Widely used in natural gas and sewage sludge incineration. Ionic liquids and adsorber modules are new competition.
Scrubber Chemicals	Some chemicals make mercury soluble others ensure that the mercury in solution is not re-emitted, other chemicals react with and hold the mercury.
Adsorber Module	Relatively new with early installations in coal-fired power and sewage sludge incineration where it is demonstrating low cost and high efficiency.
Metal Sorbent	A primary option in non-ferrous smelting but only at the pilot stage in coal- firing.
Molecular Sieve	Primary use is dehydration of natural gas where two functions can be combined. Why not consider dual functions for coalescers and particulate filters.
Ionic Liquid	Good initial experience in natural gas and some interesting test data on combustion exhausts.

The relevant market and technical information for all the industries is included in:

N056 Mercury Air Reduction Market. The technical information is included in the following knowledge systems:
1ABC Fabric Filter
2ABC Scrubber/Adsorber/Biofilter Knowledge Systems
3ABC FGD and DeNOx Knowledge Systems
4ABC Electrostatic Precipitator Knowledge Systems
9ABC Air Pollution Monitoring and Sampling Knowledge Systems

These knowledge systems contain decision slide decks to help six different industries select the best solutions for their mercury problem. Cross pollination efforts by McIlvaine have the potential to broaden the available options. One of the biggest potentials is for coal-fired power to benefit from the WTE and non-ferrous industry experience.

The potential use of the WTE acid loop by the power industry is transformative. The coal-fired power plant would become a chemicals complex with production of rare earths, precious metals, hydrochloric acid, gypsum or sulfur and flyash. The WTE experience plus the Chinese and U.S. initiatives for extraction of rare earths from flyash can lead the way to the power/chemicals complex.

A webinar on February 11 will discuss the technical options.