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ENV-04-185 Application of Optical Remote Sensing/Radial Plume Mapping Method to Monitor Refinery & Petrochemical Facility Emissions

Ram Hashmonay- ARCADIS G&M

Format:
Electronic (digital download/no shipping)

Associate Member, International Member, Petrochemical Member, Refining Member - $0.00
Government, NonMember - $25.00

Description:

Optical remote sensing (ORS) techniques have been known in the scientific community for more than two decades as viable and powerful approaches to air pollution measurements. During the period of the late 1980s, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) clearly anticipated that ORS techniques would play an important role in measuring airborne pollutants.1 Interest in developing ORS techniques to measure gaseous pollutants spurred intensive research and development activities. In fact, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, many industries, including the petrochemical industries, performed many emission measurement studies using an ORS technique.2 These activities led to the development of the EPA’s guidance document for an Open Path Fourier Transform Infra-Red (OP-FTIR) Technique3 and consequently, the approval of the EPA’s Compendium Method TO-16.4 Also, several equivalency tests for an Ultra- Violet Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy (UV-DOAS) technique were approved for O3, NO2, and SO2. Despite these efforts, few practical applications for ORS techniques were put into practice in the US, and interest in the methods began to fade with the approach of the end of the millennium. Cost, premature commercialization, complexity of operation and data interpretation, interferences and false positives, and misuse (right instrument for the wrong application) are only several reasons for this reduced interest in ORS technologies. So what has changed? Why does EPA think now is the time to reintroduce ORS technologies? First, even though research activities have been scaled down significantly, the instruments have advanced along with data interpretation procedures, which have improved the detection limits and accuracy of the methods. We have reached a point where reliable real time concentration data can be achieved with all ORS technologies. This allows user friendly interfaces, leading the operation of ORS technologies towards a turn key solution with very low required maintenance. Secondly, back in the 1990’s, most applications deployed the ORS instruments as they are (i.e. single beam). No spatial information was acquired, which led industries to believe that the technology was inferior to conventional point monitors. The truth is that for source characterization purposes, the basic ORS path integrated concentration (PIC) data is far superior to point monitors. Downwind from a source, the total mass of an air contaminant across the plume is captured, and in conjunction with the high temporal resolution feature, short events are monitored that could never be detected by time integrated methods. Still, spatial information across the plume is essential for direct (no modeling) emission flux determination, and therefore multiple beam approaches have been recently developed.

Product Details:

Product ID: ENV-04-185
Publication Year: 2004