Mathematical Models for Calculating Air Pollution Emissions from Lithographic Printing Operations

摘要

The printing industry in the United States is a very diversified one. Not only the printing operations of each facility varies in sizes but also in the complexity of printing technologies and chemicals used. There are six major printing processes used in the industry: lithography, gravure, flexography, letterpress, screen printing and electronic printing. Lithographic printing process is used by most printers and takes more than 46% of the printing market share (1). A typical lithographic printing operation may use sheetfed, nonheatset web, or heatset web offset printing process. It may also involves the use of letterpress printing, tinting, coating, and quite often flexographic and screen printing as well. After working with more than 400 printing facilities and 40 state and numerous local agencies in the country in the preparation of annual emission inventory, the author recognizes that most of those printing facilities had difficulties reporting their annual VOC (volatile organic compounds) emissions. The main causes are owing to the complexity of various printing operations involved as well as the lack of understanding by the facility personnel on how air pollution emission should be calculated. Henceforth, the author suggests that several mathematical models need to be developed to calculate emissions of air pollution and potential to emit from printing operations so that their emission inventories are properly documented and reported. In addition, those models may also aid the federal, state and local agencies to better manage emission inventories from various printing operations.