Sung Jun Lee

Sorption Mechanisms for Mercury Capture in Warm Post-Gasification Gas Clean-Up Systems

The research was directed towards a sorbent injection/particle removal process where a sorbent may be injected upstream of the warm gas cleanup system to scavenge Hg and other trace metals, and removed (with the metals) within the warm gas cleanup process. The specific objectives of this project were to understand and quantify, through fundamentally based models, mechanisms of interaction between mercury vapor compounds and novel paper waste derived (kaolinite + calcium based) sorbents (currently marketed under the trade name MinPlus). The portion of the research described first is the experimental portion, in which sorbent effectiveness to scavenge metallic mercury (Hg{sup 0}) at high temperatures (>600 C) is determined as a function of temperature, sorbent loading, gas composition, and other important parameters. Levels of Hg{sup 0} investigated were in an industrially relevant range ({approx} 25 {micro}g/m{sup 3}) although contaminants were contained in synthetic gases and not in actual flue gases. A later section of this report contains the results of the complementary computational results.