Next generation integrated electrostatic gas cleaning systems

Air pollution can be composed of many materials, such as: particulate matter (PM); acid gases such as SOx, NOx, HCl, etc.; greenhouse gases such as COx, NxOy, PFC's, etc.; ozone depletion substances such as Freon, Halon, etc.; volatile organic compounds such as TCE, TCA, toluene, xylene, etc.; and toxic gases such as Hg, dioxins, etc. These pollutants normally are mixed. To eliminate them, an integrated system is currently used, depending on a fuel used for combustion sources or composition of wastes in incinerators. For PM, new guidelines will be changed from the existing PM10 to PM2.5 within the next few years, hence, all electrostatic precipitator (ESP) designs must be adjusted to the new emission limits. In this work, a new computer ESP analysis and design code will be introduced for the conversion of existing PM 10 ESP to PM2.5 ESP as well as optimizing of the design of advanced electrostatic precipitation techniques based on two-stage ESPs and an ESP integrated to gaseous pollution control systems. For a gaseous pollution control technique by a non-thermal plasma system, current on-going electron beam, pulsed corona and corona radical shower pilot plant tests and industrial demonstrations were critically reviewed and next generation integrated electrostatic pollution control systems are proposed for combustion generated pollution and air cleaning. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.