Destruction of PCDD/Fs by SCR from flue gases of municipal waste incinerator and metal smelting plant

Partitioning of PCDD/F congeners between vapor/solid phases and removal and destruction efficiencies achieved with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system for PCDD/Fs at an existing municipal waste incinerator (MWI) and metal smelting plant (MSP) in Taiwan are evaluated via stack sampling and analysis. The MWI investigated is equipped with electrostatic precipitators (EP, operating temperature: 230 °C), wet scrubbers (WS, operating temperature: 70 °C) and SCR (operating temperature: 220 °C) as major air pollution control devices (APCDs). PCDD/F concentration measured at stack gas of the MWI investigated is 0.728 ng-TEQ/Nm3. The removal efficiency of WS + SCR system for PCDD/Fs reaches 93% in the MWI investigated. The MSP investigated is equipped with EP (operating temperature: 240 °C) and SCR (operating temperature: 290 °C) as APCDs. The flue gas sampling results also indicate that PCDD/F concentration treated with SCR is 1.35 ng-TEQ/Nm3. The SCR system adopted in MSP can remove 52.3% PCDD/Fs from flue gases (SCR operating temperature: 290 °C, Gas flow rate: 660 kN m3/h). In addition, the distributions of PCDD/F congeners observed in the flue gases of the MWI and MSP investigated are significantly different. This study also indicates that the PCDD/F congeners measured in the flue gases of those two facilities are mostly distributed in vapor phase prior to the SCR system and shift to solid phase (vapor-phase PCDD/Fs are effectively decomposed) after being treated with catalyst. Besides, the results also indicate that with SCR highly chlorinated PCDD/F congeners can be transformed to lowly chlorinated PCDD/F congeners probably by dechlorination, while the removal efficiencies of vapor-phase PCDD/Fs increase with increasing chlorination.