Book Description

There is increasing concern in the petroleum industry for a practical method of accurately quantifying refinery volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed the Chemdat7 emission rate model to predict VOC emissions from surface impoundments, waste-water treatment plants, and land farms for regulatory purposes. Previous studies have indicated that Chemdat7 significantly overpredicted VOC emissions. Much of the model evaluation of Chemdat7 used the EPA isolation environmental flux chamber. There are some concerns in using the EPA isolation flux chamber for measurement of fugitive emissions from surface impoundments due to its effect on ambient wind velocity, temperature, and solar radiation. This paper discusses an alternative method for quantifying VOC emissions from waste-water treatment units using a flow-through environmental flux chamber, and includes a comparison of the results from the flow-through chamber with that of the Chemdat7 model.