Value-Added Sulfur Scrubbing: Converting Acid Rain Chemicals Into Useful Products
Date: 26.10.2010
Power plants that burn fossil fuels remain the main source of electricity generation across the globe. Modern power plants have scrubbers to remove sulfur compounds from their flue gases, which has helped reduce the problem of acid rain. Now, researchers in India have devised a way to convert the waste material produced by the scrubbing process into value-added products.
They describe details in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.
Researchers have designed a chemo-biological approach for treating the sulfate-rich effluent generated during wet scrubbing of flue gas emissions from fossil fuel fired power plants. The technique involves microbial sulfate reduction using an anaerobic up-flow packed bed bioreactor containing microbes, with ethanol as the carbon source essential for microbial growth.
The waste can be easily converted into elemental sulfur for industrial use or into metal sulfide nanoparticles for research.
Original Paper:
Rima A. Biswas, Ram A. Pandey, Tapan Chakrabarti, Sukumar Devotta. A chemo-biological treatment of scrubbing water from power plants with recovery of value-added products. International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 2010; 43 (1/2/3): 129 DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.2010.035919
Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101021104735.htm
