HG measurement in the U.S. in the wake of EPA Mats & PC Mact and the new European Standards

The EPA Issued the Mats rule ( Mercury Air Toxic Standard ) February 16, 2012 for all the coal & oil fired power plants in the USA and then the EPA issued the Portland Cement Mact on Feb 12, 2013 for the cement kilns operating in the US as well. When these rules were issued the US had almost 1,350 coal & oil fired units operating and a 100+ cement kilns running as well.

So the plants had to make a choice as to which technology they were going to adapt for mercury monitoring compliance under these rules either 
1) Sorbent Trap Sampling or 
2) HG Continuous Emissions Monitoring.

This presentation provides a brief comparison of both technologies and then an overview of implementation of sorbent trap sampling systems at both power & cement plants and a survey of sampling approaches & sorbent trap configurations used for long term sampling for mercury compliance. This presentation will address several issues related to achieving passing QA/QC in a variety of challenging sources for example sampling in high temperatures at cement kilns, high levels of SO2, high particulate or extremely wet sources. Currently the in the US Ohio Lumex has about 450+ coal fired units and cement plants using our sorbent traps for compliance including many LEE sources ( Low Emitting Electrical generating unit ). This presentation is an overview of our experiences working with these plants to help them achieve mercury compliance under these new EPA regulations and a compilation of recommendations we have developed over the last 12+ years helping these facilities with installs, training and ongoing data review for continued mercury compliance. In addition we will present a brief overview of our mercury control optimization testing that we have performed at many plants here in the U.S.

In Europe CEN are developing a new standard for the measurement of mercury and this will be compared with how mintoring is carried out in USA.