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/Nmfor 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.

Mercury in Indian Thermal Coals.

In India, coal utilization in power generation, constitutes as the single largest source of mercury emissions. This study presents mercury content in Indian sub-bituminous and bituminous coals that are primarily used as fuel in large-scale electricity generation facilities. A total of 165 number of coal samples have been collected from the major coal producing regions of the country.

Human exposure risks for metals in soil near a coal-fired power-generating plant.

Coal-fired thermal power stations (TPSs) may contaminate the surrounding soil and could lead to pollution levels that can affect human health. Soil samples collected from the immediate vicinity of a TPS were analysed for heavy metals. TPS soils were enriched with arsenic (As), strontium (Sr), copper (Cu), mercury (Hg), barium (Ba), vanadium (V), beryllium (Be), cadmium (Cd), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), and nickel (Ni).