Tennessee Valley Authority Voluntarily Reduces Mercury Emissions at its Plants

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). The U.S.’s coal-fired power plants emit about one-third of the mercury deposited in the country. Mercury is a toxic chemical emanating from coal-burning plants that falls into the waterways, where it is eaten by bacteria and then eaten by fish, which if a large enough amount is ingested, can cause neurological damage in humans. It also causes health and fetal damage in infants and young children’s developing nervous system. However, not all mercury emissions are produced from power plants, they also come from natural resources.

Many utilities owners have increased their efforts to find alternative methods and technologies to control and reduce mercury emissions. Tennessee Valley Authority (Chattanooga, Tennessee) is investing millions of dollars in installing mercury analyzers and monitoring equipment at its coal plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky.

A few of the participating plants are the 1,602-megawatt Gallatin Power Station (Gallatin, Tennessee), the 800-megawatt John Sevier Power Station (Rogersville, Tennessee), and the 1,971-megawatt Widows Creek Power Station (Stevenson, Alabama).

All coal-fired power plants have at least some sort of air pollution control devices for controlling emissions, such as the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system to reduce nitrogen dioxide (NOx), a baghouse (fabric filters) to remove particulate matter (PM), or flue gas desulfurization (FGD) scrubbers to eliminate sulfur dioxide (SO2). All of these methods and devices share a co-benefit of reducing mercury emissions. Mercury can also be reduced by fuel switching from coal or oil to gas-fired or renewable. The use of cleaner fuel would eliminate SO2 and NOx as well as mercury. An activated carbon injection (ACI) system that is installed with a baghouse can achieve mercury reduction up to 95%.

Construction has begun on a scrubber addition at TVA’s 950-megawatt Bull Run Power Station (Clinton, Tennessee) and is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2008. TVA is also installing two scrubber additions at its 1,700-megawatt Kingston Power Station (Harriman, Tennessee), which is scheduled to be operational by 2010.

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