Emission Solution: Mercury Sorbent Shipments

Sorbent Technologies Corp., Twinsburg, OH, has begun commercial shipment of brominated carbon mercury sorbents under a long-term supply agreement. The sorbents are used to capture and sequester mercury from coal combustion before it can be emitted into the environment. "We have supplied many power plants with our proprietary sorbents on a temporary basis for full-scale trials that either we or other contractors have run," explained Sid Nelson Jr., Sorbent's president. "This shipment, on the other hand, is the first of a continuing nature, where we will regularly supply a site, we expect, for many year to come." After years of demonstration projects, permanent sorbent injection systems are now beginning to be built and installed as power plants commence compliance with judicial consent decrees or state mercury reduction regulations. As these systems come on line, they require a day-to-day supply of specialty mercury sorbents. Hundreds of millions of pounds of such materials may be consumed annually in just a few years as power plants increasingly implement mercury emission controls.