Continuous emissions monitoring at cement plants
The cement industry is actively seeking to increase the use of alternative fuels for cement production. Both to decrease energy dependence on conventional fossil fuels and to mitigate negative environmental impact.
One of these alternatives is waste-to-energy. The downside is that waste incineration in cement kilns releases toxic emissions into the air containing mercury, lead, cadmium, thallium and other heavy metals.
Cement plants in general follow their own emissions monitoring standards. In cement plants, the flue gas generally includes carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), mercury and dust. SO2 emissions are mostly derived from raw material, whereas more than half of the CO2 emissions come from the limestone calcination process and the rest are related to used fuel and the efficiency of the combustion process.
If a cement plant acts as a co-incineration plant and incinerates waste, it is subject to strict emissions regulations. All waste burning plants have to at least meet the stringent emissions limit, monitoring, waste reception and treatment standards brought in under the Waste Incineration Directive (2000/76/EC), which has been recast into the Industrial Emissions Directive (2010/75/EU).
The Waste Incineration Directive subjects co-incineration plants to the continuous measurement of, for example, hydrochloric acid (HCl), hydrogen fluoride (HF) and mercury (Hg). The measuring of total organic carbon (TOC) is also mandatory.
The Continuous Emissions Monitoring System CEMS II e offers TÜV and MCERTS certified solution (QAL1) for a wide range of demanding emission monitoring applications. The CEMS II e system utilises Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy FTIR technology. CEMS II e can also be equipped with a ZrO2 oxygen analyser which is designed for continuous oxygen measurement of wet or dry flue gas. Gasmet CEMS II e is generally used to simultaneously measure the following 16 gases: H2O, CO2, CO, N2O, NO, NO2, SO2, HCl, HF, NH3, CH4, C2H6, C3H8, C2H4, CH2O and C6H14.
The Continuous Mercury Monitoring systems CMM AutoQAL and CMM have the lowest certified range in the world (0 – 5 µg/m3). CMM AutoQAL has an automatic and integrated QAL3 validation tool. The systems are perfect for monitoring mercury continuously from hot, wet and corrosive gas streams. The systems utilise Cold Vapor Atomic Fluorescence (CVAF) technology.
