Comparison of Pollutant Ambient Concentration from Two Air Pollution Control (APC) Strategies in Coal-fired Power Plant

In this paper, ambient concentrations of Hg and dioxins/furans from two air pollution control (APC) strategies are compared. The strategies include the existing APC strategy at the studied coal-fired power plant (CFPP) and the proposed APC strategy for compliance with parameters in the Environmental Quality (Clean Air) Regulations (CAR) 2014. The former system consists of electrostatic precipitator (ESP) and flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) which are commonly employed in CFPP in Malaysia, whereas the latter consists of activated carbon injection (ACI), fabric filter (FF) and FGD. It was found that the emissions under the proposed APC strategy of ACI + FF+ FGD have higher margin of limits compared to the existing APC strategy of ESP + FGD. The emissions values were then used as input in AERMOD to predict the ambient concentrations of pollutants. The findings show that the ambient concentrations of Hg and dioxins/furans from both strategies are well below the ambient guideline values, with those emitted from the proposed APC strategy are so low to the point that they are negligible.