Study of the evolution of aerosol emissions from coal-fired power plants due to coagulation, condensation, and gravitational settling and health impact

This paper studies the scavenging efficiencies of aerosol emissions from coal-fired power plants under different removal mechanisms (coagulation, heterogeneous nucleation and gravitational settling) as a function of time. It also analyses the ‘health impact’ of the aerosol before and after the above dynamic mechanisms by comparing the respirable dust fractions. The well-known equations of evolution are applied to an average PSD that represents the exhaust particulate emissions from coal-fired power plants (i.e. Aboño power plant in Asturias that belongs to Hidrocantábrico Group, S.A.). From this study it is inferred that respirable dust is scavenged with the greatest difficulty and when compared with the initial volume of respirable dust, roughly 20% remains after 18 h of gravitational settling. Therefore, gravitational settling is the main removal mechanism of respirable dust compared to condensation and coagulation.