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AN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY VERIFICATION (ETV) TESTING OF FOUR DIOXIN EMISSION MONITORING SYSTEMS
Citation:
BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE, K. COWEN, T. KELLY, A. DINDAL, Z. WILLENBERG, AND K. RIGGS. AN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY VERIFICATION (ETV) TESTING OF FOUR DIOXIN EMISSION MONITORING SYSTEMS . U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-06/079 (NTIS PB2006-114705), 2006.
Impact/Purpose:
The overall objective of the ETV Program is to accelerate the entrance of new environmental technologies into the domestic and international marketplace by identifying the environmental performance characteristics of commercial-ready technology through the evaluation of objective and quality assured data. This provides the potential purchasers and permitters with an independent and credible assessment of what they are buying and/or permitting. The AMS Center has received funding to performance verify monitoring technologies relevant for homeland security.
Description:
The Environmental Technology Verification (ETV) Program, beginning as an initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1995, verifies the performance of commercially available, innovative technologies that can be used to measure environmental quality. The ETV provides, through a third-party, quality-assured performance data so buyers and users of environmental technologies can make informed purchase and application decisions, thus providing one path to reducing emissions and improving human health. To provide cost-effective testing, Stakeholder committees, made up of members with diverse backgrounds, provide guidance to the ETV by identifying and prioritizing environmental technologies to address present day environmental quality challenges.
The ETV Advanced Monitoring Systems (AMS) Center, one of six ETV Centers, is actively involved in verifying the performance of advanced monitoring systems available to the public for purchase. The AMS Center participates in the mission of the ETV by providing test plans, protocols, conducting independent performance tests of technologies, and preparing verification reports and statements describing the results of the testing. Vendors of tested technologies can use the verification reports and statements for marketing purposes. All approved verification reports are posted on the ETV Web Site as a form of distribution. The individual verification reports and statements describe by this abstract are for four Dioxin Emission Monitoring Systems: BM Becker Messtechnik GmbH's AMESA, IDX Technologies LTD's RIMMPA-TOFMS, Monitoring Systems GmbH's DioxinMonitoringSystem and SRI International/EPA's Jet-REMPI.
The EPA Method 23 s the certified extractive method used for quantifying polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF) emissions from incinerators in the United States as well as in many other countries. This method is labor-intensive, expensive, and requires an extended time for subsequent laboratory analysis of collected samples. As a result, Method 23 measurements are made infrequently only for compliance purposes and not for long- or short-term performance monitoring. Emerging technologies are being developed to provide semi-continuous monitoring or long-term sampling of PCDD/PCDFs and may have the potential to provide more information on PCDD/PCDF source emissions than the relatively few samples required under federal or state regulations. For example, in Europe, mainly in Belgium and Germany, long-term sampling of PCDD/PCDFs has been used for compliance measurements since 2000. However, the performance of these newly introduced technologies has not been evaluated in the United States to determine their relative operational capabilities.
The purpose of this verification test was to generate performance data on four dioxin emission monitoring systems. The test was conducted at EPA's Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina, campus over a period of two weeks in September 2005 and was supported by ARCADIS under a subcontract from Battelle. The accuracy and range of the technologies were determined through comparisons to a modified version of Method 23 for the integrated sampling of PCDD/PCDF with modifications as described in Section 3.2.2 of the reports. Other performance parameters such as data completeness and operational factors were determined from operator observations.
The verification test was conducted according to procedures specified in the Test/QA Plan for Verification of Dioxin Emission Monitoring Systems and the Quality Management Plan for the ETV/AMS Center as described in the reports, the performance of the technologies were evaluated in terms of: relative accuracy, range, data completeness, and operational factors (ease of use, maintenance, and consumables/waste generated). QA oversight of verification testing was provided by Battelle and EPA. Battelle QA staff conducted a technical systems audit (TSA), a performance evaluation audit, and a data quality audit of 10% of the test data. The EPA AMS Center QA Manager also conducted a TSA.
The verification statements, the full reports on which they are based, and the test/QA plan for this verification test are all available at www.epa.gov/etv/centers/center1.html .