• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.607-618
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• 2017

Harmful air pollutants are exhausted from the various industrial facilities including the coal-fired thermal power plants and these substances affects on the human health as well as the nature environment. In particular, nitrogen oxides ($NO_x$) and sulfur dioxide ($SO_2$) are known to be causative substances to form fine particles ($PM_{2.5}$), which are also deleterious to human health. The integrated system composed of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and wet flue gas desulfurization (WFGD) have been widely applied in order to control $NO_x$ and $SO_2$ emissions, resulting in high investment and operational costs, maintenance problems, and technical limitations. Recently, new technologies for the simultaneous removal of $NO_x$ and $SO_2$ from the flue gas, such as absorption, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), non-thermal plasma (NTP), and electron beam (EB), are investigated in order to replace current integrated systems. The proposed technologies are based on the oxidation of $NO_x$ and $SO_2$ to $HNO_3$ and $H_2SO_4$ by using strong aqueous oxidants or oxidative radicals, the absorption of $HNO_3$ and $H_2SO_4$ into water at the gas-liquid interface, and the neutralization with additive reagents. In this paper, we summarize the technical improvements of each simultaneous abatement processes and the future prospect of technologies for demonstrating large-scaled applications.