Environmental Controls and Your Career

From 500 MW Combined Cycle Power plants to the small boiler located in the basement of the high rise condominium, the Clean Air Act (CAA) has pushed all this equipment under the umbrella of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) control. 

The EPA, either directly, or through local Air Pollution Control Districts (APCD), such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) requires that every fossil fuel fired piece of equipment shall be permitted through the respective governing agency. While on one hand this creates quite a regulatory maze, and compliance hurdle for the operating company, on the other it creates wonderful opportunity for engineers, scientist, MBA’s and technical lawyers, etc in the power related industries. Firms such as MavTech Energy, (mavtechenergy.com) have engineers who are uniquely skilled at engineering these permit packages. 

With the regulation of each of these pieces of equipment also comes a continuous ratcheting down to ever tighter standards for emissions such as NOx, SOx, CO, CO2. From the early 1990’s it was not uncommon to see NOx emission levels in the double digit ppm’s to current day levels of 2 ppm. 

Compliance with ever tightening standards is achieved in many ways, such as through the advent of new cutting edge combustion control technologies. Back end clean up systems utilizing sophisticated modeling and chemical reduction techniques such as Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR), and CO2 reduction through advanced efficiency control systems and improved heat transfer efficiency. 

Compliance is also achieved through Cap and Trade programs, whereby pollution credits are indexed, banked, and traded like commodities. Advanced modeling and trading platforms are utilized to obtain best market price, similar to NASDAQ and CBOT. 

All of this equipment must be Source tested per strict EPA methods to both prove performance and as a way to benchmark emission reduction. This also creates the mechanism for generating emission credits for trading. The testing of this equipment is accomplished through manual efforts utilizing sophisticated analyzers, such as chemiluminesense for the measurement of NOx, or automatic systems which monitor and record emissions through computers or Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems (CEMs). 

The opportunities are endless for engineers designing new combustion technology, business minded technologist for trading systems, lawyers sifting through the complex maze of regulations and scientist understanding the chemistry involved in each of the controlled processes.
 

James A Harber Jr ME MBA
www.mavtechenergy.com

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