FTIR Gas Analyser Helps Pöyry in QAL2 and AST Compliance Measurements

Pöyry is an international consulting and engineering company that serves clients globally across the energy, industry and infrastructure sectors. It provides services across the whole project lifecycle, from management consulting to engineering services, project management to operations support. Everything is supported by Pöyry's expertise in environmental consulting. It has offices in 40 countries.

In Imatra, Finland, Pöyry focuses on warranty and condition monitoring measurements and emissions measurements created by the process and energy industries. Pöyry’s emission measurement service team runs an accredited testing laboratory accredited for flue and exhaust gas measurements by the Finnish Accreditation Service (FINAS).

"Our traditions and core competence in Imatra come from a long history of doing process gas and emissions monitoring for the forest industry", Paula Juuti says.

Paula Juuti is the manager of the measurement team in Pöyry's Imatra offices. She is the local line supervisor and a project manager with a very versatile role that varies from sales, coordination and organisation of projects to conducting analyses and reports. Stack measurements are no longer part of Juuti’s everyday work, but she still does them every now and then.

Compliance Measurements and QAL2 and AST Procedures

A big part of Juuti’s team’s work is performing compliance measurements. Juuti describes compliance measurements as a means to build trust that measurement results made anywhere in Europe are reliable and comparable. Europe has standardised procedures and reference methods that ensure the validity of compliance measurements. Two major parts of this on-going quality assurance cycle are the QAL2 and AST procedures.

The requirements of quality assurance level 2 (QAL2) cover the calibration of the CEMS / AMS against nationally approved analytical methods applied by a test organisation accredited to EN ISO/IEC 17025 (and MCERTS in the UK) by a national body. This stage of quality assurance specifies the procedures to ensure that the continuous emissions monitoring system has been correctly installed, calibrated by comparison measurement and independently verified.

Annual Surveillance Tests (AST) are like mini-QAL2 tests that map out the performance of a CEMS. Their purpose is to verify the continuing validity of the calibration function.

To be able to perform compliance measurements, measurement teams need to prove that they have sufficient competency to carry them out by obtaining accreditation. Accredited laboratories usually need to prove their competencies on a yearly basis.

Gasmet's Role in Comparison Measurements

Gasmet was one the first manufacturers to provide industrial plants with continuous emissions monitoring systems (CEMS). Pöyry uses their own procedures to perform compliance measurements with these systems. It also performs functional tests to CEMS and comments on the findings to Gasmet, which helps develop their products and software.

Read the full article on Gasmet website blog.gasmet.com.