The experimental study on the removal of elemental mercury（Hg0） was carried out by cobalt modified MCM-41 mesoporous molecular sieve in a laboratory-scale fixed-bed reactor. An online mercury analyzer was applied to detect the inlet and outlet Hg0 concentrations. The catalysts were characterized by a variety of techniques such as nitrogen adsorption/desorption

transmission electron microscopy（TEM）

X-ray diffraction（XRD）

X-ray photoelectron spectra（XPS）and hydrogen temperature-programmed reduction（H2-TPR）. The results showed that the BET surface areas

micropore volumes

and total volume of the MCM-41 mesoporous molecular sieve decreased due to the presence of cobalt oxide. The cobalt oxide was highly dispersed on the surface of MCM-41 when its content was below 5%. However

the characteristic diffraction peaks of Co3O4 became clear with the content of cobalt oxide increasing. The Hg0 removal efficiency of cobalt modified MCM-41 catalyst first increased

then decreased with increasing the content of cobalt oxide

and the optimal loading of cobalt oxide was about 7.5%.