OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT IN CONTINUOUS EMISSIONS MONITORING FOR MIXED WASTE TREATMENT

Waste treatment is an important application and market area for continuous emissions monitors (CEMs). In the mixed waste treatment area, for example, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has legal responsibility for treatment and disposal of a current inventory of more than one million cubic meters of low-level, high-level, and transuranic mixed waste. Future DOE decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental cleanup activities will likely bring the total to more than two million cubic meters. Thermal treatment processes such as vitrification, incineration, and plasma treatment will be employed for most of this waste, and all will be treated and disposed in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. CEMs will likely be required because of public concern and insistence that potentially hazardous emissions from the treatment processes be strictly limited, continuously monitored, and documented. This paper provides an overview of the developing and envisioned regulatory and stakeholder situation with respect to CEMs and DOE waste treatment, and an overview of the status of currently available and emerging CEMs for particulate matter, Hg, multi-metals, dioxins / furans, and radionuclides. It provides technical descriptions of the technologies and performance information based on recent tests conducted under the auspices of the Mixed Waste Focus Area (MWFA), the Characterization, Monitoring and Sensor Technology Crosscutting Program (CMST-CP), and the U.S. EPA. It also identifies the CEM technology developers and describes the status and prospects of CEM development activities. The primary goal is to acquaint potential CEM users with the availability and performance of CEMs for support of DOE waste treatment operations. A secondary goal is to stimulate thinking among both CEM developers and potential users on how to implement continuous monitoring, perhaps in combination with non-intrusive feed stream characterization and improved air pollution control, to help ensure safe and affordable treatment, proper performance, and public acceptance of thermal treatment facilities.