Oxidation Catalysts for Elemental Mercury in Flue Gases—A Review

The removal of mercury from flue gases in scrubbers is greatly facilitated if the mercury is present as water-soluble oxidized species. Therefore, increased mercury oxidation upstream of scrubber devices will improve overall mercury removal. For this purpose heterogeneous catalysts have recently attracted a great deal of interest. Selective catalytic reduction (SCR), noble metal and transition metal oxide based catalysts have been investigated at both the laboratory and plant scale with this objective. A review article published in 2006 covers the progress in the elemental mercury (Hgel) catalytic oxidation area. This paper brings the review in this area up to date. To this end, 110 papers including several reports and patents are reviewed. For each type of catalyst the possible mechanisms as well as the effect of flue gas components on activity and stability are examined. Advantages and main problems are analyzed. The possible future directions of catalyst development in this environmental research area are outlined

Tribocorrosion behavior and ions release of CoCrMo alloy coated with a TiAlVCN/CNx multilayer in simulated body fluid plus bovine serum albumin

While the CoCrMo biomaterial is currently employed in artificial joints, there are medical concerns regarding its metal ion release and material loss caused by tribocorrosion. In this work, a TiAlVCN/CNx multilayer coating has been employed to improve the tribocorrosion-resistance of the CoCrMo substrate. During the tribocorrosion test, with the sample immersed in a simulated body fluid containing bovine serum albumin, open-circuit potential measurements showed more noble potential as well as a reduction of both the friction coefficient and wear-rate during the sliding phase. Inductive coupled plasma results demonstrate that the multilayer coating effectively blocked the emigration of metallic ions.Funding Agencies|CONACYT [FOMIX Jal-2010-10-149472]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU) [2009-00971]; Tecnologico de Monterrey research seed fund</p