Coal-fired power plant is the largest anthropogenic mercury source. Active carbon injection technique has been widely used to control the mercury emissions. However, high operation cost limits its development and it is necessary to find other potential mercury sorbents. In this study, raw semi-coke and a series of novel cerium (Ce) modified semi-cokes were synthesized and utilized for removing elemental mercury (Hg⁰) from simulated flue gas. It is noteworthy that the efficiencies were tested without hydrogen chloride (HCl) in order to evaluate the sorbents efficacy for low-chlorine (Cl) coal. The results show that the modified sorbents exhibited the best performance at 150 °C. The performance of sorbent could be reinforced due to the existence of oxygen (O₂), nitric oxide (NO) and HCl. The adverse effect caused by sulfur dioxide (SO₂) reduced dramatically after Ce modification. The negative impact of ammonia (NH₃) on Hg⁰ removal in this study could be neglected owing to the tiny concentration of NH₃. Raw semi-coke provided sufficient carbon content, which is favorable to mercury adsorption. As Ce loading increased, the carbon structure changed and the crystal of cerium oxide was formed in the modified semi-coke. The mass fraction of cerium oxide on the sorbent was over 4.4% when the concentration of Ce modification solution was higher than 0.2 mol L⁻¹. The redox reaction activity and the oxygen storage ability of Ce³⁺/Ce⁴⁺ gave a huge boost to the performance of modified semi-coke. The addition of Ce also had an impact on the proportion of oxygen species.

燃煤电厂是最大的人为汞源。活性炭注入技术已被广泛用于控制汞排放。但是，高昂的运营成本限制了其发展，因此有必要寻找其他潜在的汞吸附剂。在这项研究中，原料半焦和一系列新型铈（Ce）改性半焦被合成并用于从模拟烟道气中去除元素汞（Hg ⁰）。值得注意的是，在不使用氯化氢（HCl）的情况下测试了效率，以评估低氯（Cl）煤的吸附剂功效。结果表明，改性吸附剂在150°C下表现出最佳性能。氧气（O ₂的存在）可增强吸附剂的性能），一氧化氮（NO）和HCl。Ce改性后，由二氧化硫（SO ₂）引起的不利影响大大降低。氨（NH ₃）对Hg ⁰去除的负面影响可以忽略不计，因为NH _3的浓度很小。未加工的半焦提供了足够的碳含量，这有利于汞的吸附。随着Ce含量的增加，改性半焦炭中的碳结构发生变化，形成氧化铈晶体。当Ce改性溶液的浓度高于0.2 mol L ^-1时，氧化铈在吸附剂上的质量分数超过4.4％。Ce ³⁺ / Ce的氧化还原反应活性和储氧能力⁴⁺极大地^改善了改性半焦的性能。Ce的添加也对氧种类的比例有影响。