Emissions Monitoring : Supplier Partnership, the key to efficient emissions monitoring?

Consumers worldwide are willing to take a stand on sustainability when making purchase decisions, an IBM study finds.

In March 2021, the IBM Institute for Business Value surveyed over 14,000 people in nine countries (United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Germany, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, China and India). The intention of the study was to reveal to what extent environmental consciousness drives global consumers.

Results showed that 54% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products, irrespective of pressure occasioned by pandemic related financial insecurity.

With respondents growing increasingly concerned over the global climate crisis, businesses across industries are starting to invest in new technologies in order to reduce their individual environmental footprint.

In said move towards a circular economy, emissions transparency has become key to general business operation.

For companies seeking to manage and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, proper identification and quantification is not only crucial for the determination of their status-quo with regards to pollution but also important when making informed decisions on emissions reduction.

This is where continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS) come in.

Approved by most environmental regulatory authorities, CEMS determine and track the gas or particulate matter concentration or emission rate of specific pollutants. They monitor gas streams for the likes of sulfur dioxide, nitrogren oxides, carbon monoxide, mercury as well as ammonia.

Gasmet Technologies, a key manufacturer of CEMS and gas analyzers, offers extended value to its customers not only in the form of customizable, innovative solutions for industrial gas measurement and monitoring applications but also via extended after-sales support.

One of the major challenges when it comes to emissions measurement is the choice of the right equipment from a plethora of options.

In this sense, the Finland based company effectively partners with facilities to find an emissions monitoring solution that reflects their requirements.

“I sit down with the customer and just listen. I listen to their needs, what they are trying to achieve, what their problem is. Then our job is to figure out what we can offer to solve that problem,” says Sales Manager Andrew Dixon from Gasmet UK.

However, Gasmet also goes further than the provision of initial support prior to purchase in the form of design and manufacturing of customized systems for applications by offering companies specialized legal expertise.

Legislative requirements often prove a significant challenge to operators, as large monitoring processes involve complex measurement and reports to national authorities such as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or the UK Environment Agency.

Requirements with regards to emissions limits and allowed gas concentrations grow ever more stringent-as an example, rules first developed in the US for utilities and the power sector now also apply to smaller industrial processes.

“This is where we can help and do the heavy lifting. Our people have worked in the field for a long time and know the related legislation. We can go through the customer’s environmental permit and applicable sections in the legislation, and explain what they need to comply,” Dixon says.

In this sense, Gasmet can help future-proof the operations of its clients, ranging from incineration and combustion plants to other industrial facilities.

As companies are required to provide real time emissions data to environmental authority bodies, with governments often restricting the allowed down time for systems like CEMS, plant operators require their system to run smoothly for a decade or more, especially considering that a non-functional CEMS can interrupt the regular operation of an entire plant or incinerator. Gasmet seeks to solve this issue by providing highly skilled technical support via its global network of distributors and service partners.

“The trend is that plants have less and less people on site. Apart from annual maintenance, our CEMS takes very little upkeep. It is good to make a visual check maybe once a week. Customers find it reassuring to know that we can do remote diagnostics for the system in case something happens,” says Jesse Tikka, Sales Manager at Gasmet.

The adoption of CEMS in the industry does not only serve the purpose of avoiding environmental contamination as well as complying with environmental regulations but can also give insights into the operational efficiency of companies, triggering technological innovation whilst helping to cut costs in select areas.