Hazardous Air Pollutant Emissions from the External Combustion of Hydrocarbon Gaseous Fuels Can Be Predicted!

Passage of the 1990Amendments to the Clean Air Act made it clear that maximum available control technology (“MACT”) regulations on the emission of hazardous air pollutants (“HAPS”) from process heaters and industrial boilers, used extensively in the petroleum and petrochemical industries, would be promulgated under congressional mandate by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency in the year 2000. Unfortunately, i t had also become clear that under.Mnding, the “goodscience” upon which we aspire to base sensible regulations, was simply non-existent and, further, that the little field data then extant was severely flawed. To amend those deficiencies, a 4-year $7-million fundamental attack on the origin and fate of trace toxic emissions in the external combustion of gaseous hydrocarbon fuels has been conducted by a government-university-industry collaboration I that has been, by all accounts, one of the most successful ever.