Technical solutions to limit the dust emissions according the provisions of the U.E. Directive 80/2001/EC through the rise of the performances of the electrostatic precipitators existent in the thermo power in Romania

The fossil resources of energy ensures about 85 % from the whole used energy. They are immediately available and can satisfy the world energy demand for a couple of centuries. The main fossil resource is the coal. The accessible coal is estimated over 10000 Gt. This figure should be compared whit an yearly carbon consumption of 6.0 - 6.5 Gt of all the combinations of fossils fuels. The use of the energy content of the fossil fuels today is not limited by the resources availability , but rather by the solution of the bearings of the coal use upon the environment. These implications were mainly limited at pollutants like SOx, NOx, particles, heavy metals and CO2. The provisions with regard to the heavy metals and particularly the mercury and the effects of the fines upon the health require much more severe controls on the pollution with these components. The tendency to an energy much more favorable for the environment requires more and more engineering to clean the gases issued at the coal processing and combustion. The European regulations in the environmental field and the integration process of Romania in the European structures were translated among other things in the Romanian legislation through HG 541/2003 that imposes limits to the gaseous and solid noxious emissions for the fossil-fuel combustion plants with thermic power over 50 MWt and the MAPPM Order 492/1993 for other combustion installations. The subject of this paper is the reduction of dust emissions through the increase of the performances of the existing electrostatic precipitators in the power plants of Romania achieved thorough projects of ICPET S.A. - Environment Protection Division, with a stress upon the power plants in the Oltenia county: S.E. Rovinari, S.E. Turceni, S.E. Craiova. It is to notice the financial effort made by the mentioned power plants to achieve the modernization programme of the electrostatic precipitator installations they own in order to limit the emissions at the level allowed by the norms in force. The major part of the rehabilitation of the electrostatic precipitator installations in the Romanian power field fulfils the environment protection requirements mentioned above and are already applied to the power plants Rovinari, Turceni, Craiova II and Deva. It was found that in case of the electrostatic precipitators that were not rehabilitated the dust emission can grow up to 1000 mg/Ncu,m, while in the case of the rehabilitated ones, the dust emissions are much lower, down to the norms in force at present. At the same time, the rehabilitation of electrostatic precipitator installations in order to achieve 50 mg/Ncu,m prepares the power groups to receive the wet desulphurization installation with efficiencies up to 95 %