Gas-phase elemental mercury removal by nano-ceramic material

The nano-ceramic which is mesoporous silica material was applied to test the removal efficiency of gas-phase Hg-0 using a fixed-bed reactor. The physical and chemical properties of nano-ceramic were investigated by various techniques such as BET surface area (BET), X-ray diffraction, fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), and scanning electron microscope (SEM); then, the sample was tested for mercury adsorption under different conditions. The mercury adsorption tests shown that different Hg-0 concentration, adsorption temperature, gas flow rate, and different gas components have significant effects on the mercury removal performance of nano-ceramic, and the adsorption removal rate of nano-ceramic can be 75.58% under the optimal experimental conditions. After fitting the experimental data to the adsorption model, it was found that the theoretical maximum mercury adsorption amount q (max) of nano-ceramic is 1.61 mg g(-1) and there were physical and chemical adsorption at the same time. The adsorption kinetics fitting results shown that the adsorption process of nano-ceramic exhibits multi-segment characteristics of "transmembrane-diffusion-adsorption."