CEM - Abstract

Abstract Information :

The IED Directive (2010/75/EU) requires the monitoring of industrial emissions in accordance with international and national standards. It sets performance requirements and a total uncertainty on the data provided by the automated measurement systems (AMS). The EN 14181 standard specifies three quality assurance levels (QAL1, QAL2 and QAL3) and an annual test (AST).

Reference methods play an important role in the quality assurance levels, especially with regards to QAL1, QAL2 and AST. With the arrivals of the new BREFs, the emissions levels reported by the plants will decrease more and more, and are in some cases already very low, closed to the limits of quantification or detection of the measurement devices using standard reference methods. Therefore, continuous emission measurement devices will obviously have to evolve and become more efficient, accurate and reliable.

For some gaseous compounds required by the IED, such as CO, NOx or TOC, automated reference methods are already in use. But for other compounds such as HF, HCl, NH3 and SO2, the standard reference methods are manual. In this case, the analysis are carried out afterwards in the laboratory. The impact on the test results (QAL1, QAL2 and AST) might be important, besides the time required for manual analysis. The EN 15267-4 sets performance specifications and test procedures for automated measurement systems for the periodic measurement of emissions from stationary sources (P-AMS) and could be an answer to the challenges of the manual analysis for stack testing applications.

In this context, we will discuss the new opportunities offered by alternative methods to the reference methods, with a focus on the SO2. The alternative will be demonstrated by the performance results (effects of temperature and pressure variations, signal-to-noise ratio, reproducibility) of these solutions in the laboratory and in field conditions.