Company: BCHT
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001477932-25-002237
Chunk: 4

Company: Birchtech Corp.
Filing Date: 2025-03-31
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 4
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-40% of the mercury in the post-combustion flue-gas exists in the oxidized state for power plants burning low-rank coal and about 60-70% for power plants burning high-rank coals. Mercury is found in only trace amounts in coal making it difficult to remove from coal or from the flue-gas when combusted with the coal. It is in the burning of millions of tons of coal that these trace amounts become problematic and is why MATS was promulgated.

The other major pollution control system which contributes significantly to the co-benefits of mercury removal is an SCR system which can be installed to achieve high levels of removal of NOX. SCRs are also very large and expensive systems (costing hundreds of millions of dollars in capital costs to install on a medium-size EGU) that are typically installed just after the flue-gas exits from the unit boiler. As a co-benefit, SCRs have been shown to oxidize a considerable percentage of the elemental mercury in many types of coal. If the EGU then has a combination of an SCR and a scrubber, we estimate that the EGU might achieve an over-all reduction of 80-85% of the mercury in power plants that burn high-rank coals. The exact level of mercury emission reductions depends on the designs of these systems, the types of coal being burned and the operations of the power plant.

We believe that a large percentage of the coal-fired EGUs in the U.S. employ some sort of sorbent injection system to achieve the very low mercury emission levels required by the MATS rule, with either the sorbent injection system as the primary removal method or such a system being employed as a supplemental system to SCR/scrubber combinations to achieve the emission limits.

In the United States, potable water treatment is regulated primarily by the EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act (“SDWA”), which establishes standards to ensure that water is safe for human consumption.  The SDWA was originally passed by Congress in 1974 to protect public health by regulating the nation’s public drinking water supply. The law was amended in 1986 and 1996 and requires many actions to protect drinking water and its sources—rivers, lakes, reservoirs, springs, and ground water wells. (The SDWA does not regulate private wells which serve fewer than 25 individuals.) The SDWA authorizes the EPA to set national health-based standards for drinking water to protect against both naturally-occurring