MONITORING PM 10, PM 2.5 AND PM 1.0 EMISSIONS FROM INDUSTRIAL SOURCES AND DOMESTIC STOVES

1 ABSTRACT

Recent epidemiological studies have shown that fine particles in ambient air are more harmful than it was supposed to be. Therefore the latest legislation of the EC [1] includes PM 10 and PM 2.5 limit values at a low level.
In Germany and in other European countries there are gaps in keeping these demanding goals. For the gap closure it is necessary to carry out research in fine particle emission data. Emission measurement investigations have been carried out into various industrial sources like cement kiln (industry), secondary copper smelter, glass industry, wood combustion, different coal fired power plants and into a small scale domestic heating unit with the help of cascade impactors (8-stage and 6-stage). In total 202 emission measurements at 34 industrial plants and 4 domestic stoves have been evaluated.

The results show a high amount of fine particles in the waste gases, dependent on the kind of industrial plant and on the used fuel. Approximately 75 % of the examined installations have at least an average PM 10-proportion > 90 %. Higher proportions of PM 2.5 und PM 1.0 were found at firing installations with coarser structured solid fuel in contrary to installations using finer structured pulverized fuel.

A distribution analysis of the dust constituents, like Pb, Cd, Cr, Ni, Zn of the examined fine dust fractions was carried out. In some cases the proportions of the dust constituents related to the mass of the particles for each examined impactor stage show a considerable enrichment of heavy metals in the finer particle fractions (grate cooler system). For other systems examined so far this strong enrichment effect could not be proven.

2 INTRODUCTION

On international and on European Union level [2], [3], [4], [5], [6] the health relevance of fine particles has been re-evaluated. The suggested limit values will be much stricter than the former standards. This will lead to limitvalue exceeding in certain areas not only in Germany [1].

The strict limit values imply the necessity for abatement measures of fine particle emissions. Emission abatement can only be achieved, however, if the emission structure of the sources of the fine particles and of the mass flow is known.

Since the former legislation contained only determinations of the total suspended matter emissions, the level of knowledge of fine dust emissions is still incomplete nowadays. The results of comprehensive measurement programmes in Germany, which are presented in this paper, shall help to clear up these problems.

The programmes contain measurements at industrial sources with a high proportion of the total dust emission in several German states, like Saxony-Anhalt [18], Bavaria [15] and Baden-Wuerttemberg [16]. Further measurements were carried out at installations, whose dust emissions include health-relevant substances like heavy metals and metalloids.

Investigations were taken in particular into installations of the cement industry, the copper metallurgy, glass industry, wood combustion and different coal fired power plants. First results have already been presented [7],[16].

In the new German States and in future EC member states like the Czech Republic, Poland and others brown coal briquettes are still frequently used for the heating of domestic stoves. Therefore fine dust emissions were measured at an iron stove using different briquette sorts. Examination of wood burning in domestic stoves and small scale combustion units was also included in the measuring programme.