Sometimes the enemy of raw materials is itself. Power plants that use electrostatic settlers, for example, use low-sulfur coal as a raw material to reduce the production and discharge of sulfur oxides into the air, which can cause acid rain. However, low - sulfur coal is low in sulfur content and does not effectively remove dust from the boiler combustion. A certain amount of SO3 is required to remove dust. If there is not enough SO3, the exhaust pipe will discharge too much dust. The previous solution to this problem was to add sulfur to the process, which was costly, inconvenient, dangerous to maintain, and affected the yield. Recently, Applied ceramics and related companies have successfully developed a new ceramic material to solve the problem. The method is derived from Applied ceramics' honeycomb ceramic extrusion forming technology and catalyst technology. This method can make the low-sulfur coal produces enough SO3, without adding other sulfur, this process needs to adopt ceramic material is because the environment of high temperature (850 ° F), catalyst under this temperature environment to work, and make to preserve inert ceramic materials in the process, and interact with catalyst reaction.

The method USES extruded honeycomb ceramic made of fused quartz ceramic material. Molten quartz has the advantages of inertia, low thermal expansion and high thermal capacity. The fused quartz honeycomb ceramics can be used as catalyst support and substrate. The catalyst is bonded to the surface of honeycomb ceramics and penetrates into the pores by a secondary impregnation process. This means that over the lifetime of the honeycomb ceramics, even if the surface structure is corroded during use, the catalyst inside will remain exposed, thus maintaining the catalytic efficiency during installation.

The honeycomb ceramic catalyst structure provides a very effective and low-cost method to solve the problem of low sulfur coal. Other benefits include energy savings, avoiding fires and the potential for explosions during storage and disposal of molten sulfur.

This ceramic-catalyst structural process will yield significant economic benefits and reduce environmental pollution, not only for power plants that use the downcomer in the United States, but also for factories around the world that use similar equipment.