| Contents Notes |
"As part of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the U.S. EPA has promulgated regulations for facilities that treat hazardous wastes by incineration. Compliance with the performance standards specified in the regulations Is demonstrated by conducting a trial burn, which involves measurement of particulate emissions, hydrochloric acid (HCI) emissions, and Destruction and Removal Efficiency (DRE) for the Principal Organic Hazardous Constituents (POHCs) of the waste. During subsequent routine operating burns, carbon monoxide (CO) is the only chemical species for which effluent concentrations are monitored. It might be desirable to supplement this measure of overall combustion efficiency with an organic monitoring technique that could provide a more direct measure of PHOC emissions and thus of DRE. The objective of this field program was to evaluate the reliability of non-methane hydrocarbon analyzers as a continuous indicator of the DRE of a hazardous waste incinerator. During a 5-day test period, two non-methane hydrocarbon analyzers (Columbia Scientific Industries Corporation [CSI] Model 500-2E and HMD Systems, Inc., Model 201-250) were evaluated. During the test period, the sample conditioning/ analysis system operated reasonably well. The non-methane hydrocarbon concentrations measured by the CSI and HNU analyzers were observed to be about 20% of the total hydrocarbon analyzer concentration. The ratio of non-methane hydrocarbon concentrations observed by the CSI and HNU analyzers was observed to be about equal to 1. Over the range of operating conditions and combustion efficiency observed in this field study, the non-methane hydrocarbon appeared to be independent of CO concentration." |
