Clean air and water: applications of FTIR to environmental monitoring

The tightening of environmental regulations presents new challenges to chemical manufacturing and utility plant managers, and also to analyzer manufacturers. The recent rules promulgated as a result of the 1990 Clean Air Act have substantially lengthened the list of chemicals requiring reporting for stack and fugitive emissions monitoring. Releases of 189 toxic compounds must now be controlled, up from only 7 previously. These HAP requirements will grow in number and spread by application to other industries. Other new legislation is forcing industry to police itself, by mandating `voluntary' reports of releases within hours of the incident. Similar constraints are coming for wastewater releases. This trend is expected to accelerate for the next few years and spread to other countries. Though current regulations mandate only periodic documentation, intermittent monitoring (quarterly or monthly) clearly will not suffice. The regulators are forcing continuous release monitoring for hazardous air and water pollutants. Environmental activism (by GreenPeace and others) and increased political awareness are indications that European regulators will soon follow the U.S. EPA's lead. These waste streams are nearly always complex multicomponent mixtures requiring sophisticated analyzers to identify and quantify the species present. This paper identifies several complex waste streams (incinerator stacks, ambient air, and industrial wastewater) and describes the successful application of on-line FT-IR analyzers.