Understanding selected trace elements behavior in a coal-fired power plant in Malaysia for assessment of abatement technologies

The Proposed New Environmental Quality (Clean Air) Regulation 201X (Draft), which replaces the Malaysia Environmental Quality (Clean Air) 1978, specifies limits to additional pollutants from power generation using fossil fuel. The new pollutants include Hg, HCl, and HF with limits of 0.03, 100, and 15 mg/N-m3 at 6% O2, respectively. These pollutants are normally present in very small concentrations (known as trace elements [TEs]), and hence are often neglected in environmental air quality monitoring in Malaysia. Following the enactment of the new regulation, it is now imperative to understand the TEs behavior and to assess the capability of the existing abatement technologies to comply with the new emission limits. This paper presents the comparison of TEs behavior of the most volatile (Hg, Cl, F) and less volatile (As, Be, Cd, Cr, Ni, Se, Pb) elements in subbituminous and bituminous coal and coal combustion products (CCP) (i.e., fly ash and bottom ash) from separate firing of subbituminous and bituminous...