Experimental evaluation of the effects of quench rate and quartz surface area on homogeneous mercury oxidation

This paper presents a mercury oxidation data set suitable for validation of fundamental kinetic models of mercury chemistry and for mechanism development. Experimental facilities include a mercury reactor fitted with a 300-W, quartz-glass burner and a quartz reaction chamber. While operated with a temperature profile representative of a typical boiler, a residence time of 6 s was achieved. Participating reacting species (chlorine, mercury) were introduced through the burner to produce a radical pool representative of real combustion systems. Speciated mercury measurements were performed using a Tekran 2537A Analyzer Coupled with a conditioning system. Homogeneous mercury reactions involving chlorine have been investigated under two different temperature profiles producing quench rates of -210 K/s and -440 K/s. The larger quench rate produced 52% greater total oxidation than the lower quench at chlorine concentrations of 200 ppm. The effect of reactor surface area on oxidation was also investigated. The quartz surfaces interacted with mercury only in the presence of chlorine and their overall effect was to weakly inhibit oxidation. The extent of oxidation was predicted using a detailed kinetic model. The model predicted the effects of quench rate and chlorine concentration shown in experimentation. (C) 2006 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.