Advanced Methods for Estimating Annual Stockpile Emissions

摘要

Particulate emissions from material storage stockpiles generally account for a significant portion of a mineral processing facility's total annual emissions. Current methodologies used by many state environmental regulatory agencies to estimate these emissions have been based predominantly on conservative factors. Considered by state agencies to be acceptable representations of emissions, these factors are often overly conservative and result in an overestimate of the actual total annual wind-driven fugitive emissions. Calculations based on the method outlined in this paper have been shown to produce annual emission rates significantly lower than those obtained using standard conservative emission factors. The clear benefit of a more representative method for determining annual emissions from wind-driven sources is the avoidance of unintended over-regulation and the resultant waste of limited public and private resources consumed in the process. This paper presents an alternative method for calculating emissions from, but not limited to, conical material storage stockpiles. The basis for this alternative emission calculation method is derived, in part, from AP-42 Section 13.2.5, Industrial Wind Erosion. This method allows the use of site-specific information, such as local hourly meteorological data, particle size distributions, material type, and average moisture content.