Confidential Client
Challenge – Cost of Mandated Air Monitoring
Regulators informed a facility that it required air monitoring for a select constituent emitted from industrial batch operations and a regulated volatile organic compound as a hazardous air pollutant. Manual air monitoring was costly, approximately $1,000 per day. State regulators wanted reliable reporting, using a state agency approved method.
To help offset these costs and achieve regulatory compliance, SCS proposed, designed, built, and installed an SCS Remote Monitoring and Control® system (RMC) system comprised of seven wireless air monitoring stations and an integrated, on-site meteorological station. The SCS RMC® system collects and records the data, sends out automatic alarms and reports, and allows for real-time data viewing.
Outcomes and Benefits
The state regulatory agency reviewed and approved the SCS RMC system design. The system is highly reliable, cost-effective, and it reduces regulatory agency accuracy in reporting concerns. The system’s data is used to evaluate emission fate and transport and demonstrate compliance with risk-based ambient air standards.
Installation of the system was on time and on-budget, with the investment recovered in three months. In addition to the monetary benefit, the SCS RMC® system continues to provide transparency and timely reporting to the regulators and other users through:
Alarms: The facility staff receives a combination of email and SMS alarms that alerts specific staff when instantaneous and time-weighted average air monitoring results exceed their setpoints. Alerts enable specific staff to react quickly to issues that may be occurring at their facility.
Automatic reports: Each morning, the system automates and sends a report to facility management and regulators summarizing the last 24 hours of air monitoring data. The report automatically identifies the maximum instantaneous and time-weighted average data points from each monitoring point and correlates them with the corresponding weather conditions at that time. The report allows the parties to review the important data from the prior day quickly and efficiently.
Online database: The RMC system data automatically uploads to the SCS eTools® platform, an online environmental monitoring database. Through SCS eTools®, the client and other authorized users review historical and instantaneous minute-by-minute data and export it for further review, graphing, and computation.
