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Metal Emissions Monitor for DOE Mixed Waste Thermal Treatment

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Tech ID: 18
Project Overview
A continuous emissions monitor (CEM) for metals is applicable to incinerators and other thermal treatment devices and offers several potential benefits to DOE end-users. The benefits include process performance verification and subsequent risk reduction permitting the selection of operational strategies that maximize efficiency while assuring continued compliance, and the promotion of public confidence in thermal treatment units. Current EPA methods to measure metal emissions are very costly (upwards of $10,000 per stack per triplicate sample), and because they utilize extractive batch samples, they provide no real-time emissions data.
Technology Description
The metal emissions monitor makes use of the laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) technique, an atomic emission spectroscopy diagnostic that uses a pulsed laser to create a small microplasma in air. All metal species, both in the gaseous or particulate phase, are dissociated and excited within the plasma, and the resulting spectral emissions are used for quantitative elemental analyses.The LIBS technique can be performed in situ and in real time.

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