Gossman Consulting Inc. has considerable experience over more than three decades in trouble shooting and developing control strategies for mercury emissions from industrial furnaces, cement kilns and incinerators. We have done industry wide reviews of the quality of stack test data and one of the first steps we take is to review the data to make sure that the results a facility or authorities may have concerns about are accurate. We then look at the time based dynamics of how the process is operated as well as all the material inputs to see if the emission issue is transient in nature. Once a full understanding of the process chemistry, inputs and emissions are obtained we are then in a position to choose the most efficient and cost effective method of limiting mercury emissions.
We have been managing stack tests for mercury from industrial furnaces since the late 80's and were the first to perform successful mass balances on mercury input and outputs on cement kilns at that time. We understand the complexity of dynamic systems and the difficulties in getting good mercury data both in the stack emissions as well as process samples. In the early 90’s we were the first to develop sample testing strategies for complex solid waste samples to accurately determine mercury in less than 30 minutes using cryogenic processing of the waste materials and subsequent cold vapor analysis. In 2015 we obtained a patent on a mercury control strategy that does not involve the use of activated carbon and in the 90’s developed other control strategies for the inherently non-steady-state operation of precalciner cement kilns to limit mercury emissions and avoid the need for activated carbon controls. Some of our papers on the subject of mercury testing and control in industrial furnaces and cement kilns are listed below.
David Gossman, and Susan Gossman