IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2005.07346.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mercury-related health benefits from retrofitting coal-fired power plants in China

Author

Listed:
  • Jiashuo Li
  • Sili Zhou
  • Wendong Wei
  • Jianchuan Qi
  • Yumeng Li
  • Bin Chen
  • Ning Zhang
  • Dabo Guan
  • Haoqi Qian
  • Xiaohui Wu
  • Jiawen Miao
  • Long Chen
  • Sai Liang
  • Kuishuang Feng

Abstract

China has implemented retrofitting measures in coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) to reduce air pollution through small unit shutdown (SUS), the installation of air pollution control devices (APCDs) and power generation efficiency (PGE) improvement. The reductions in highly toxic Hg emissions and their related health impacts by these measures have not been well studied. To refine mitigation options, we evaluated the health benefits of reduced Hg emissions via retrofitting measures during China's 12th Five-Year Plan by combining plant-level Hg emission inventories with the China Hg Risk Source-Tracking Model. We found that the measures reduced Hg emissions by 23.5 tons (approximately 1/5 of that from CFPPs in 2010), preventing 0.0021 points of per-foetus intelligence quotient (IQ) decrements and 114 deaths from fatal heart attacks. These benefits were dominated by CFPP shutdowns and APCD installations. Provincial health benefits were largely attributable to Hg reductions in other regions. We also demonstrated the necessity of considering human health impacts, rather than just Hg emission reductions, in selecting Hg control devices. This study also suggests that Hg control strategies should consider various factors, such as CFPP locations, population densities and trade-offs between reductions of total Hg (THg) and Hg2+.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiashuo Li & Sili Zhou & Wendong Wei & Jianchuan Qi & Yumeng Li & Bin Chen & Ning Zhang & Dabo Guan & Haoqi Qian & Xiaohui Wu & Jiawen Miao & Long Chen & Sai Liang & Kuishuang Feng, 2020. "Mercury-related health benefits from retrofitting coal-fired power plants in China," Papers 2005.07346, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2005.07346
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.07346
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2005.07346. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.