Control technology assessment of plastics processing plants

A nually pproximately 12 million metric tons of plastic resins are processed anin the U.S. by more than 7000 plastics processing plants. Many types of resins, chemicals, and additives are combined to produde finished products through a variety of process operations such as adhesives production, coating, extrusion, film and sheet production, foam generation, lamination, and molding. Hughes et al.' have estimated that 462,000 metric tons per year of mixed organic chemical agents are emitted from the plastics processing industry. This represents 2.8% of the total U.S. hydrocarbon emissions from all stationary sources. Also, about 157,000 metric tons of particulate matter per year are lost to the atmosphere in plastics processing, which represents 0.12% of the total U.S. particulate emissions from all stationary sources. These authors also have taken into consideration industry representative sources, source severity, severity factors, and the population exposed to pollutants resulting from plastics processing. Large compositional and handling variations in plastics processing* necessitate the determination of the kinds and quan-