The adsorption ability for vapor-phase Hg degrees on commercially available granular activated carbon (AC) loaded with CuCoO4 (AC-Q, CuCoO4 + NH4Cl (AC-Cl), and CuCoO4+NH4Br (AC-Br) were investigated in an attempt to produce more economic and effective sorbents for the control of Hg degrees emission from combustion processes. According to the X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) and mass balance analysis on mercury, we found that N-doped AC-C had bigger S-BET and the nitrogen doping greatly improved CuCoO4 Hg degrees oxidation ability. It was considered that nitrogen atoms in doped CuCoO4 polycrystalline and anion Cl-/Bractivated by AC and N-doped CuCoO4 were responsible for the significant enhancement in Hg degrees oxidation ability of AC-Cl and AC-Br. We explored the Hg' oxidation ability of the three kinds of materials under various loading values and adsorption temperatures. We found that AC-Cl and AC-Br were more sensitive to loading value and had much higher Hg degrees oxidation ability than AC-C over a wide range temperature. The longevities of AC-C, AC-Cl and AC-Br were all less than the corresponding Al2O3 carrier material due to CuCoO4 decomposition effect on AC, which destroyed the porous structure of AC. The effect of 0.31 vol.% SO, on the Hg degrees oxidation ability of AC-C, AC-Cl and AC-Br was insignificant which indicated that N-doping did not adversely affect Co3+ and Cu2+ octahedrad structure. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.