Section Five
WASTE MANAGEMENT
E. ORGANICS
65    MEASUREMENT OF TOXIC AIR CONTAMINANTS FROM
AN INDUSTRIAL WASTEWATER TREATMENT PLANT
Richard R. Boyd, Senior Program Manager
Radian Corporation
Herndon, Virginia 22071
Judy A. Nottoli, Senior Engineer
Radian Corporation
Sacramento, California 95827
Michael A. Zapkin, Senior Engineer
Radian Corporation
Rochester, New York 14623
INTRODUCTION
A greater regulatory emphasis is presently being placed on industrial facilities to assess or inventory
emissions from their plants. Due to the specific chemical make-up of a process stream and the variety
of processes involved in waste treatment, a customized emissions measurement approach should be
designed for an individual facility. This paper presents the details on the methodology and the results
of such a program for measuring emissions from an industrial wastewater treatment plant (WWTP).
A complex sampling and analyses program was conducted in order to determine the emissions of
volatile and semivolatile compounds from the WWTP in response to the following regulatory acts:
• The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA Title III) of 1986;
• The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); and
• The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
Under SARA Title III, Section 313 (toxic chemical release inventory), facilities are required to
report chemical releases to the air and other environmental media. Emission estimates from process
waste sewers, pretreatment units, and final treatment systems are required in the annual submittal.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) presently requires control of process vents and
equipment leaks from specific hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities (TSDFs);
determination of VOC emissions from aerated and nonaerated surface impoundments and other final
treatment units will be required under additional RCRA standards. Implementation of maximum
achievable control technology (MACT) for Section 112 hazardous air pollutants is required under the
Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. Lowest achievable emission rate (LAER) standards will be
developed for "secondary emission" sources such as waste collection and treatment systems. This
study addressed the emission estimates required under these regulations.
The objectives of the study were to:
1. Design and conduct a field sampling and analysis program to characterize the organic
compound emissions from the wastewater treatment facility;
2. Develop measurement/estimation protocols for various processes within an industrial
wastewater treatment facility; and
3. Build a complete database to support modeling activities for estimation and verification
applications.
47th Purdue Industrial Waste Conference Proceedings, 1992 Lewis Publishers, Inc., Chelsea, Michigan 48118.
Printed in U.S.A.
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