The Behavior of Mercury and Sulfur in An Oxy-Fuel and Integrated Pollutant Removal System

Oxy-fuel combustion uses conventional technology and denitrified air to combust fossil fuels resulting in a flue gas which is primarily CO2. Integrated Pollutant Removal (IPR™) compresses the gas to pipeline pressure and uses the cooling at the IPR inlet, as well as intercooling between compression steps, to remove soluble and entrainable material with the precipitated water. Latent and sensible heat given up by the processed gas at the cooling steps are partially recovered and used to preheat the boiler feed water. Because most of the nitrogen has been removed from the oxidizing gas, the relative concentration of the remaining gasses, such as SO2 and Hg, in the resulting flue gas is increased. The increased concentrations have implications for removal and also corrosion. This paper follows sulfur and Hg from an oxy-fuel fired system through the compression and cooling steps of IPR. A model of the system is compared with actual data from a coal-fired burner test facility.