The growing world population is contributing to the increasing amounts of waste and a significant increase in energy demand. Therefore, coal will increasingly be replaced by refuse-derived fuel (RDF), which is produced from municipal solid waste. The use of such fuel poses many difficulties because of its heterogeneity and high mercury emission. One method to stabilize the properties of RDF and reduce the mercury content is thermal pretreatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the release of mercury from RDF samples following thermal pretreatment. The study was carried out in the temperature range of 100–350 °C. Statistical analysis was performed on the correlation between the composition of the RDF samples and the release of mercury. The RDF samples showed a very high variation in the mercury content, ranging from 45 to 849 µg Hg/kg (1.7 to 35.3 µg Hg/MJ). Thermal pretreatment removed a significant amount of mercury at 250 °C (94–99%). Paper content positively affected mercury release. Relatively low correlation coefficients were obtained in the statistical analysis, which may be explained by the significant heterogeneity of the RDF samples magnified by the variability in the mercury content within particular fractions.

The most common methods of reducing mercury emissions are the use of fixed bed granular sorbents and sorbent injection. However, both of these methods have disadvantages, such as increasing the flow resistance or the need to remove the sorbent from flue gas, respectively. These disadvantages can be eliminated by using sorbents permanently bound to construction materials (fixed sorbent materials—FSMs) or mixed with construction materials (sorbent polymer composites—SPCs). The approach is unique in the world literature as well as the development of three stands and procedures enabling the testing of FSMs or SPC materials based on Tarflen as a construction material. In order to further tests of FSMs and SPCs, the system for laboratory tests and two systems for industrial tests are developed. These stands and procedures enable determination of the influence of: FSM or SPC module shapes, flue gas properties (e.g., composition, temperature, flow rate), and mercury concentration on the effectiveness of mercury removal by SPCs and FSMs. In this paper, the influence of module shapes, gas velocity, and temperature is particularly considered. In the final industrial tests, the FSM removes 99.5% Hg after 42 days and the SPC removes from 99.5% to 82.3% after 34 days.