Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations SSS148 on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Incinerators emissions - dioxins and furans: who knows any portable device for measuring these 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

jenchem

Chemical
Oct 9, 2012
3
how are these chemicals measured from incinerator emissions? Any ideas?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

There are no portable devices. You have to comply with the "FULL" protocol, that is, pump a given volume of gas into a cartrige containing an adsorbent, after filtration , at a given temperature. In Europe refer to EN 1948 1; If you do not want to do that, then the only reasonable thing is to quickly determine the amount of a surrogate; could be CO -but this is risky-
Other (better) surrogates may be determined by GC-MS methods.
At any rate a calibration is needed , if you want to use surrogates, against the "FULL", standart, referenced method,
The reason is that the relationship between the surrogate and the dioxins is plant-dependant.


In incinerators we use either the "FULL" (EN 1948 in Europe, I think EPA 1613 in USA)", refrence method (3 to 6 hours sampling) + analysis in a lab , using High resolution GC + MS
or semi continous (2 to 4 weeks sampling, then analysis of the cartrige in a lab (high res GV + MS)

Again this is risky. I have followed this topic closely, and, to the best of my knowledge, all attemps to find a simple & cheap way to get at the dioxins have failed, or at least have failed to be of a broad enough usage.
 
The previous reply goes into pretty good detail. There may be options depending on what you are trying to accomplish by collecting the data.

The US EPA publication AP-42 has published factors that can be used if you need some type of estimate.

US EPA has test methods used to collect complianec-level data. I cannot recall the specific method we use to use but it is not cheap. It's work that a satck sampling company would pretty much have to do if you intend to submit the data to regulatory agencies.

Potentially . . . potentially you could rent a Summa canister from a lab or sampling company and collect the sample for them to analyze. A Summa canister is basically a highly-polished stainless steel evacuated canister that pulls in sample either until the valve is closed or the vaccum is gone. Too high a concentration and you probably bought the $1,000 can and too low and you will not detect anything. The sample is run on a GC-MS back at the lab.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor