Dissolved Organic Carbon and Mercury Treatability in FGD Wastewater

摘要

In this extended abstract, results are presented from an ongoing EPRI-funded study designed to investigate the impact of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) on mercury removal in FGD wastewater treatment processes. The first phase of this project was conducted between 2012 and 2013 and test results suggested a potential negative impact of DOC on the mercury treatability of chloride purge streams from wet flue gas desulfurization (FGD) scrubbers. These findings led to further investigations conducted from 2014 to the present. Methods were developed to study the organic carbon species in more detail and to isolate the species of interest for wastewater treatment studies. Current investigations involve 1) determining if the mercury present in FGD chloride purge streams is predominantly complexed with dissolved organic carbon and 2) isolating aliquots of speciated organic matter present in FGD chloride purge water samples. The isolated species of organic matter will be used to quantify the impacts of specific classes of organics on mercury removal technologies through bench-scale tests. This extended abstract provides a brief summary of results from the first phase of this study and a more detailed summary of results from the current investigations.