Big trouble for coal fired power plants?

The Government of India is forcing coal fired power plants around the nation to fit “Flue Gas Desulphurisation Plants” (FGD) to strongly reduce their emissions of sulphur dioxide. This is very good news for the environment and for people’s health. There is a complication however: the chimneys of these coal fired power plants will be operating at very low temperatures and there is a risk of acid droplets being ejected out of these chimneys, both onto the power plant itself and onto surrounding communities, sometimes as far as several kilometres away.

This problem is called “spitting” and in order to avoid it, the chimneys have to operate with low flue gas velocities.