RECENT ADVANCES IN SAMPLING AND ANALYSIS OF COAL-FIRED POWER-PLANT EMISSIONS FOR AIR TOXIC COMPOUNDS

The new Clean Air Act requires coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) to evaluate their hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) emissions. However, standard reference methods for testing HAP emissions from CFPPs are not available. Recent advances in HAP emissions measurements have resulted in major improvements in both sampling and analysis methods. Two such advances include the use of plume-simulating dilution sampling using zero background dilutants for simultaneous gas and particle phase HAPs sampling and the use of solid absorbants such as charcoal for vapor phase element sampling. These new methods have proven effective in characterizing hazardous pollutant emissions from coal-fired power plants. They provide the ability to collect more samples simultaneously in shorter times and at lower costs. The hazardous element sampling train (HEST) concept can be extended to a wide range of sampling requirements and has the potential to form the basis for a hazardous element integrating continuous emissions monitor.