The development of models for mercury oxidation in oxyfuel combustion

Supervisors: Professor M Pourkashanian, Professor L Ma, Professor K Hughes

Oxyfuel combustion is one of the leading technologies for carbon capture and storage. Mercury is released to the gas-phase during oxyfuel combustion of coal and biomass and form trace species in flue-gas. Mercury compounds can pose corrosion problems for oxyfuel combustion power plants.

Carbon in ash is believed to be a key driving force for reaction and absorption of mercury in power plants. A predictive model for mercury behaviour in oxyfuel power plants would help select suitable control strategies.

This project aims to develop a heterogeneous chemical kinetic model for mercury reaction on carbon surfaces with the aid of molecular modelling tools such as Guassian, chemical kinetics programs like Chemkin and computational fluid dynamic (CFD) codes such as Fluent.

For further information contact Professor Derek B Ingham (d.ingham@sheffield.ac.uk).