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Fugitive Emissions and Ways of Tackling Them

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Gas Track Engineering
Fugitive Emissions and Ways of Tackling Them

If your company has fugitive emissions, it is vital to deal with this situation immediately. Fugitive emissions are accidental leaks of volatile substances and gasses from pressurized vessels or lines due to defective equipment or mechanical issues. Besides being part of the other numerous types of human-caused pollution, fugitive emissions typically occur, yet they aren’t dealt with adequately.


Regular emissions from industrial combustion go through electrostatic precipitators, chimneys, and vents systematically. Hence, it is easy for plant operators to sample them using monitoring equipment. Fugitive emissions are generated by a sudden activity that cannot be monitored. So it is challenging to mitigate them as you cannot account for them.


You can identify a broad range of gaseous releases like evaporation losses from wastewater treatment facilities and storage tanks, emissions from gas emanation from mining companies, hazardous waste, and loading and unloading discharge.


Cement Industry


The cement industry produces a substantial amount of dust at every phase. The fugitive emission is caused by spillage, leakage, and handling, beginning from the quarrying process and ending with dispatch and packing operations at the cement plants. The dust released in cement industries contains dangerous substances like:


  • Lime
  • Chromium compounds
  • Crystalline silica (quartz)
  • Gypsum
  • Nickel


The type of cement will determine the exact components of the fugitive dust. With proper Fugitive emission surveys, you can identify elements in the emissions. These toxic emissions pose severe health risks like cancer ad lung disease.



Coal Mining and Handling


The coal industries also experience fugitive emission problems regularly. These industries store coal piles in open areas for fuel in captive coal plants. These piles are always uncovered, causing them to generate mineral dust due to various reasons like the movement of loading equipment and trucks, load out, and disturbance by wind currents.

 

How to Curb Fugitive Emissions Using Technology


Intelligent engineering processes and regular maintenance are integral to industrial hygiene that reduces fugitive emissions. In some countries, bigger industries must create manuals on their strategies for dealing with fugitive emissions. That is necessary for getting the approval of agencies responsible for protecting the environment.


The first phase of controlling fugitive emissions is by having a system for tracking the emissions from the source. This system will enable plant operators to seal the holes, releasing the gaseous fugitive emissions immediately. The best firms will invest in gas detection devices. These gadgets will reduce the time spent finding leakages. Here are the technologies for controlling fugitive emissions.


  • DIAL (Differential Absorption Lidar) is a common technique for detecting emissions. It detects pollutants hundreds of meters away in the air. This technology reduces the exposure of humans to toxic emissions.
  • OGI (Optimal Gas Imaging) is a newly developed technology using infrared imaging to detect gaseous leakages.
  • VAM (Ventilation-Air-Methane) technique uses methane sustainably and cost-effectively in Coal Mines.
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