Abstract |
The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA), Title III, present a need for stationary source sampling and analytical methods for the list of 189 toxic air pollutants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has used VOST and SemiVOST sampling and analytical methods for a wide variety of volatile and semivolatile organic compounds in the past, but these methodologies have been completely validated for only a few of the organic compounds. The applicability of VOST and SemiVOST techniques to the halogenated organic compounds listed in Title III of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 has been evaluated under laboratory conditions for chromatographic separation, mass spectrometric response, sorbent recovery and analytical method detection limit. Dynamic spiking techniques for the sampling trains (both gaseous and liquid dynamic spiking) were also evaluated in the laboratory. In the study, the VOST and SemiVOST methods were evaluated in the field at a fossil fuel power plant. The source was selected to provide actual stationary source emissions with the compounds of interest present in trace amounts or not present. The paper presents the results of the field validation of the VOST and SemiVOST sampling and analytical methods. |