"Eighty-seven percent of the mercury going out into the atmosphere is coming from utility boilers, waste combustors, coal-fired power plants, cement plants and medical incinerators."

The sharpest drop in demand was in heavy fuel oil, the kind used in factories and utility boilers, as well as in heating large buildings.

The Northeast group has previously issued recommended standards for control of nitrogen oxides from utility boilers.

A completely mechanized and automated coal handling and stoking system was first used to feed pulverized coal to an electric utility boiler in 1921.

It also adopted a set of standards on large stationary sources of nitrogen oxides, like utility boilers.

Other industries using bulk materials handling include flour mills and coal fired utility boilers.

Furthermore, proposed limits on mercury emissions have the potential to add costly pollution controls on coal-fired utility boilers.

It is assumed that most SCR systems to be retrofit onto electric utility boilers will be designed for about 90 percent reduction.

Consequently, installation of these technologies on many coal-fired utility boilers is not expected to result in severe changes in demand for the hardware items listed.

The latest models produce more energy per unit of fuel than typical utility boilers.