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AN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY VERIFICATION (ETV) OF TWO CONTINUOUS EMISSION MONITORS (CEMS) FOR MEASURING AMMONIA EMISSIONS: SIEMENS AG LDS 3000, AND OPSIS AB LD500
Citation:
Battelle. AN ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGY VERIFICATION (ETV) OF TWO CONTINUOUS EMISSION MONITORS (CEMS) FOR MEASURING AMMONIA EMISSIONS: SIEMENS AG LDS 3000, AND OPSIS AB LD500.
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 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 two Continuous Emission Monitors (CEMs) for Measuring Ammonia Emissions - Siemens AG LDS 3000, and the Opsis AB LD500.
The purpose of this verification test was to evaluate the ability of ammonia CEMs to determine gaseous ammonia in flue gas, by comparison to reference ammonia measurements and challenges with ammonia standard gases, under normal operating conditions in a full-scale coal-fired power plant equipped with selective catalytic reduction nitrogen oxide control technology. This verification test was conducted at American Electric Power's Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, West Virginia, from July 15 to August 15, 2003. The performance parameters addressed included accuracy, comparability, linearity, precision, calibration and zero drift, response time, ease of use, and data completeness. Accuracy was assessed for the technologies by determining the degree of agreement with known concentrations of ammonia prepared from compressed ammonia gas standards. Comparability refers to the degree of agreement with flue gas ammonia measurements made by a reference method. Precision was assessed in terms of the repeatability of the technologies' ammonia measurements with stable ammonia concentrations. Linearity, calibration drift, zero drift, and response time were assessed using commercial compressed gas standards of ammonia and high purity nitrogen zero gas. (Due to the nature of the test procedure, the response times recorded were limited by the gas changeover time in the test cell and not by the instrument response time.) The effort spent in installing and maintaining the technologies were documented and used to assess ease of use. The amount of time the two technologies were operational and the maintenance activities performed were recorded to assess data completeness.
QA oversight of verification testing was provided by EPA and Battelle. Battelle QA staff conducted a technical systems audit (TSA), a performance evaluation audit, and a data quality audit of 10% of the test data. An independent TSA was also conducted by EPA.