Mercury emissions and partitioning from Indian coal-fired power plants

In India coal combustion is the single largest source of emission of mercury which is a wide-spread persistent global toxicant, travelling across international borders through air and water. As a party to the Minamata convention, India aims to monitor and reduce Hg emissions and stricter norms are introduced for mercury emissions from power plants (30 μg/Nm³for flue gas in stack).This paper presents the results obtained during the experimental studies performed on mercury emissions at four coal-fired and one lignite-fired power plants in India. The mercury concentration in the feed coal varied between 0.12–0.27 mg/Kg. In the mercury mass balance, significant proportion of feed coal mercury has been found to be associated with fly ash, whereas bottom ash contained very low mercury. 80%–90% of mercury was released to air through stack gas. However, for circulating fluidised bed boiler burning lignite, about 64.8% of feed mercury was found to get captured in the fly ash and only 32.4% was released to air. The mercury emission factor was found to lie in the range of 4.7–15.7 mg/GJ.     

Thermal defluorination behaviors of PFOS,PFOA and PFBS during regeneration of activated carbon by molten salt

• New method of mineralizing PFCs was proposed. • Activated carbon was regenerated while mineralizing PFCs. • Molten NaOH has good mineralization effect on PFOS and PFBS. Current study proposes a green regeneration method of activated carbon (AC) laden with Perfluorochemicals (PFCs) from the perspective of environmental safety and resource regeneration. The defluorination efficiencies of AC adsorbed perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorobutanesulfonate (PFBS) using three molten sodium salts and one molten alkali were compared. Results showed that defluorination efficiencies of molten NaOH for the three PFCs were higher than the other three molten sodium salts at lower temperature. At 700°C, the defluorination efficiencies of PFOS and PFBS using molten NaOH reached to 84.2% and 79.2%, respectively, while the defluorination efficiency of PFOA was 35.3%. In addition, the temperature of molten salt, the holding time and the ratio of salt to carbon were directly proportional to the defluorination efficiency. The low defluorination efficiency of PFOA was due to the low thermal stability of PFOA, which made it difficult to be captured by molten salt.The weight loss range of PFOA was 75°C–125°C, which was much lower than PFOS and PFBS (400°C–500°C). From the perspective of gas production, fluorine-containing gases produced from molten NaOH-treated AC were significantly reduced, which means that environmental risks were significantly reduced. After molten NaOH treatment, the regenerated AC had higher adsorption capacity than that of pre-treated AC.     

Techno-economic evaluation of ultrasound and thermal pretreatments for enhanced anaerobic digestion of municipal waste activated sludge

To enhance the anaerobic digestion of municipal waste-activated sludge (WAS), ultrasound, thermal, and ultrasound + thermal (combined) pretreatments were conducted using three ultrasound specific energy inputs (1000, 5000, and 10,000 kJ/kg TSS) and three thermal pretreatment temperatures (50, 70 and 90 °C). Prior to anaerobic digestion, combined pretreatments significantly improved volatile suspended solid (VSS) reduction by 29-38%. The largest increase in methane production (30%) was observed after 30 min of 90 °C pretreatment followed by 10,000 kJ/kg TSS ultrasound pretreatment. Combined pretreatments improved the dimethyl sulfide (DMS) removal efficiency by 42-72% but did not show any further improvement in hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) removal when compared with ultrasound and thermal pretreatments alone. Economic analysis showed that combined pretreatments with 1000 kJ/kg TSS specific energy and differing thermal pretreatments (50-90 °C) can reduce operating costs by $44-66/ton dry solid when compared to conventional anaerobic digestion without pretreatments.     

阴燃中出现有焰火的理论初探

阴燃是一种自维持,不断传播的,异相反应的放热燃烧过程。典型的阴燃例子有蚝烟,地下煤矿的燃烧等。从热安全角度来看阴燃过程,不完全的氧化反应和可燃物热解都会产生很多的有毒气体,对人造成危害;另外在一定的条件下,阴燃还会突然转化为有焰火,进行更猛烈的燃烧,造成更大的破坏。     

细水雾对锂离子电池热失控抑制作用的实验研究

为研究细水雾对锂离子电池热失控的抑制作用,利用自设计细水雾实验装置对18650型锂离子电池热失控进行抑制实验,对比两节电池依次燃爆和不同阶段使用细水雾的温度曲线。研究表明,细水雾对于抑制锂离子电池热失控有效,但不同热失控阶段细水雾抑温效果差异较大,结合锂离子电池多米诺效应和机载灭火设备适航性要求,应尽可能将细水雾喷雾时间节点靠近初次爆炸的时间节点。提出通过准确探测初次爆炸发生和进一步增强细水雾抑制作用来控制锂离子电池热失控及多米诺效应的发生和传播。     

乌鲁木齐9、10号泉F~-映震特征的研究

从监测泉点的水文地质概况入手，结合近18年来的观测资料，分析并总结了9、 10号泉水中F-的映震特征： F-的地震前兆异常基本上都是正异常，且具有较好的重复性，即基本上遵循： 背景值-脉冲式突升-最高值-突降-恢复至背景值的规律。 而地震常常发生在F-含量恢复背景值后数天或数十天，仅有个别地震发生在F-含量达最高值时。 最后，初步认定了泉点较好的地震构造环境是造成该9、 10号泉F-具有映震灵敏性的原因。     

Hazard evaluation for chlorination and amination reactions of fluorocytosine production process

Reaction thermal runaway is one of the most important reasons leading to chemical accidents. With the rapid development of the chemical industry in the world, especially the fine chemical industry, various safety accidents also occur frequently. Therefore, it is necessary to study the exothermic behavior of the reaction process. In this study, reaction calorimeter was used to study the exothermic phenomena during the chlorination reaction and amination reaction. Differential scanning calorimetry was performed on the reactants, and thermogravimetric experiments were performed on the products. In addition, adiabatic experiment was performed to study the thermal runaway behavior of amination products under adiabatic conditions. The results showed that the target reactions generated a large amount of heat in the initial stage. The maximum temperature of amination reaction is higher than the initial decomposition temperature of the amination product under adiabatic condition. The pyrolysis of amination product was divided into three stages. The product had a high apparent activation energy at the beginning of decomposition, and the apparent activation energy decreased as the decomposition progressed.     

水稻和玉米的热氧化分解特性及几种动力学方法结果的比较

利用热重分析仪在空气气氛、不同的升温速率下对带壳稻谷粉和玉米粒粉进行了热重测试,依据热重实验数据,采用多种热解动力学分析方法计算了水稻和玉米的活化能数值并进行比较,结果表明水稻和玉米的热氧化反应活化能随着转化率出现先增加后降低的趋势,并在转化率为70%左右达到了极大值。     

太空环境下锂离子电池热失控与火灾的研究展望

综述了锂离子电池的热失控机理,介绍了由于电池内部电解液、电池隔膜和电极材料分解的链式热反应过程而引发的热失控和火灾现象。同时,讨论了锂离子电池在微重力太空环境中可能产生的烟黑浓度倍增,加速火蔓延,火焰喷射等极端火行为。进而探讨了开展锂离子电池的低压、落塔和抛物飞行等地面实验模拟太空微重力燃烧的方法可行性,建立数值模型预测太空微重力环境下锂离子电池热失控临界条件与火灾行为的必要性,以及如何通过基础研究科学地指导空间站电池热管理和消防系统的设计。     

Inherent thermal runaway hazard evaluation method of chemical process based on fire and explosion index

Thermal runaway hazard assessment provides the basis for comparing the hazard levels of different chemical processes. To make an overall evaluation, hazard of materials and reactions should be considered. However, most existing methods didn't take the both into account simultaneously, which may lead the assessment to a deviation from the actual hazard. Therefore, an integrated approach called Inherent Thermal-runaway Hazard Index (ITHI) was developed in this paper. Similar to Dow Fire and Explosion Index(F&EI) function, thermal runaway hazard of chemical process in ITHI was the product of material factor (MF) and risk index (RI) of reaction. MF was an indicator of material thermal hazards, which can be determined by initial reaction temperature and maximum power density. RI, which was the product of probability and severity, indicated the risk of thermal runaway during the reaction stage. Time to maximum rate under adiabatic conditions and criticality classes of scenario were used to indicate the runaway probability of the chemical process. Adiabatic temperature rise and heat of the desired reaction and secondary reaction were used to determine the severity of runaway reaction. Finally, predefined hazard classification criteria was used to classify and interpret the results obtained by this method. Moreover, the method was validated by case studies.