Ambient Air Fence Line Application

The Challenge

The Victoria Environmental Protection Agency installed an Opsis DOAS open path system to measure Benzene & SO2 emissions on the Fenceline of our client’s refinery.

After initial findings, our client was requested to supply their own monitoring system. Acoem was approached to design, install and maintain a suitable BTX monitoring station. Subsequently, the scope was increased to include ambient HF monitoring.

The Solution

Acoem supplied and installed two sets of open path Opsis DOAS analyser. The emitter and receiver was installed on 6 m high concrete pillars to ensure that the Xenon light beam does not interfere with people and animals in the area.

In order to ensure maximum data yield from the system, the emitter and receiver set was equipped with auto-alignment devices. The monitoring station was also equipped with a continuous dust monitor and meteorology sensors. Later, a trace HF monitor was also added to the system.

The Outcome

The Opsis open path system allowed for measurement over a 400m range, suitably accounting for possible fugitive emissions from the refinery. The system was also equipped with an auto aligner to mitigate ground shifting during the seasons. This provided better coverage of background levels and fugitive emissions alike, which could have been easily missed by a single conventional point monitoring station.

Acoem operated the station to our NATA accreditation ensuring optimal data accuracy and data yield. The addition of a continuous HF analyser allowed replacement of labour intensive filter based HF samplers.

Acoem provided monthly NATA accredited data reports and any exceedances of pre-set concentration values (i.e. alarms) where automatically reported to interested parties by email and SMS notifications.