Recent progress on the clean and sustainable technologies for removing mercury from typical industrial flue gases: a review

Abstract Mercury emitted from flue gas has been a typical kind of globally hazardous atmospheric pollutants. The efficient control is therefore significant for clean and sustainable industrial development. This paper focused on mercury emission behavior and the characteristics of typical industrial processes. Particularly, the work reviewed the control techniques and commented on the latest progress of harmless treatment techniques. It is found that non-ferrous metals smelting and coal combustion are the primary sources of atmospheric mercury, accounting for about 80 % of the total emissions. Compared with controlling mercury emission from the source and the process, the end-of-pipe treatment technologies were characterized by high efficiency, with removal rate of Hgp exceeding 90 %. During the flue gas purification process, mercury are merely separated, while the perniciousness is still existed. After heat treatment and plasma method, the mercury can be desorbed from the absorbents, through which the activity of adsorbents can be restored. Simultaneously, mercury can be purified into mercury by chelating agent, acid washing, and electrolysis, thereby realizing resource utilization. The paper also highlighted the advantages and constraints of emission control techniques, harmless and resourceful treatment. Moreover, some new ideas for the efficient disposal of mercury were provided.