Odor monitoring
An odor is “any smell emanation that humans or other animals perceive by the sense of olfaction”.
The emanations can be constituted by inorganic gaseous products or by volatile organic compound. Odors monitoring is, presently, required by authorities during authorization procedures.
SARTEC has developed a methodology for the estimation, control and analysis of the olfactory impact, due to production processes, that includes the following phases:
- Speciation of odor emissions. It can be divided in:
- Sampling, depending on the different production cycle (type of processed materials and quality of real or foreseen emissions)
- Chemical analysis, that allow to identify and quantify the chemical compounds that constitute the odor mixture
- Characterization of odor emission parameters, basing on odor mixture composition; the quantification of the olfactory impact induced by the emission is evaluated by correlating the odor thresholds (OT) of each compound and the emitted odor units (OU/m3);
- Evaluation of the olfactory impact in the territory by using the software CALMET-CALPUFF. This atmospheric dispersion model allows to simulate the concentration of the pollutants, emitted in air, from the possible sources (point-like, area and volumetric). CALPUFF is the preferred model, officially used by US-EPA, for the estimation of long distance transported molecules in atmosphere and, in particular, for odor dispersion modeling.
Fugitive emission monitoring
SARTEC offers a consultancy service to identify, monitor and control volatile organic compound (VOC) fugitive emissions coming from leaks of process plant devices. Differing from traditional methods based on statistic procedures or sniffing, SARTEC applies a new approach, called “Smart LDAR”. The method is in compliance with the best practice demanded by the IPPC Directive and by the EPA LDAR (Leak Detection and Repair) Protocol; it requires the detection of the VOC’s leaks by using a visual survey of the process devices by using a variable optics infrared camera (equipped with a filter with bandwidth in the electromagnetic infrared region (3-5 µm)) and the leak’s quantifications by using a PID or a FID analyzer.
The procedure is supported by an information system managing a database with all data relevant to the potential emissive sources of the plant to be monitored. The information system allows to plan the field investigation with the IR camera, thanks to information contained in it and simply extracted by process technical documentation. It, also, allows to automate operations such as estimation of fugitive emissions, statistical acquired data analysis, emission of a maintenance program and a control program of the maintenance reliability. |
