Industrial Plant for Flue Gas Treatment with High Power Electron Accelerators

Fossil fuel combustion leads to acidic pollutants, like SO2, NOx, HCl emission. Different control technologies are proposed however, the most popular method is combination of wet FGD (flue gas desulfurization) and SCR (selective catalytic reduction). First, using lime or limestone slurry leads to SO2 capture, and gypsum is a product. The second process where ammonia is used as reagent and nitrogen oxides are reduced over catalyst surface to gaseous nitrogen removes NOx. New advanced method using electron accelerators for simultaneous SO2 and NOx removal has been developed in Japan, the USA, Germany and Poland. Both pollutants are removed with high efficiency and byproduct can be applied as fertilizer. Two industrial plants have been already constructed. One in China and second in Poland, third one is under construction in Japan. Information on the Polish plant is presented in the paper. Plant has been constructed at Power Station Pomorzany, Szczecin (Dolna Odra Electropower Stations Group) and treats flue gases from two Benson boilers 60 MWe and 100 MWth each. Flow rate of the flue gas stream is equal to 270 000 Nm3/h. Four transformer accelerators, 700 keV electron energy and 260 kW beam power each were applied. With its 1.05 MW total beam power installed it is a biggest radiation facility over the world, nowadays. Description of the plant and results obtained has been presented in the paper.