Two measurement campaigns were carried out at ENERGI E2's Asnaes Power plant, unit 5. The unit has a capacity of 620 MW, and is equipped with a wet flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) plant employing a counter-current spray absorber with five spray levels. In the first campaign. the power plant was firing Orimulsion(R) with 2.85 wt% S resulting in a flue gas concentration of SO2 exceeding 2000 ppmv. In the second campaign. the fuel applied was a low-S blended coal and the SO2 concentration in the raw gas was around 400 ppmv. A novel probe for in situ sampling of gas phase concentrations in wet FGD spray absorbers was developed and applied for measuring axial profiles of the SO2 gas phase concentrations in the absorber. The expected decrease in SO2 concentrations along the height of the absorber was found in the spray section (from height 26.5 to 36.2 m) whereas the SO2 concentration above the holding tank and below the gas inlet was quite low probably due to long local residence times in the region. Horizontal variations, due to somewhat different flow conditions near the column wall were investigated and the SO2 concentrations were found to be higher near the wall. Measurements at different gross loads showed that the SO2 gas phase concentration at a given position inside the absorber was roughly linearly related to the L/G ratio in the measuring interval. Turning off one of the lower spray levels. while burning coal with low S content, did not lower the overall removal efficiency of the absorber. However. the SO2 gas phase concentration inside the lower part of the absorber was increased by a factor of 2-3. Measurements of slurry pH at different positions showed a decrease of approximately 0.5 units from the upper to the lower part of the absorber. The full-scale measurements provide a detailed set of experimental data for validation of mathematical models of a wet FGD spray absorber. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.