Establishment of a novel advanced oxidation process for economical and effective removal of SO2 and NO

SO2 and NO have caused serious haze in China. For coping with the terrible problem, this paper proposed a novel advanced oxidation process of ultraviolet (UV) catalyzing vaporized H2O2 for simultaneous removal of SO2 and NO. Effects of various factors on simultaneous removal of SO2 and NO were investigated, such as the mass concentration of H2O2, the UV energy density, the UV wavelength, the H2O2 pH, the temperatures of H2O2 vaporization and UV-catalysis, the flue gas residence time, the concentrations of SO2, NO and O2, and radical scavenger. The removal efficiencies of 100% for SO2 and 87.8% for NO were obtained under the optimal conditions. The proposed approach has some superiorities, i.e. less dosage and high utilization of oxidant, short flue gas residence time and inhibiting the competition between SO2 and NO for oxidants. The results indicated that the desulfurization process was dominated by the absorption by HA-Na, whereas the denitrification was primarily affected by the H2O2 dosage, UV energy density and H2O2 pH. Interestingly, an appropriate amount of SO2 was beneficial for NO removal. The reaction mechanism was speculated based on the characterizations of removal products by XRD, FT-IR and IC.