Tooele Army Depot facilitated a multi-agency collaborative effort to better understand open burning and open detonation (OB/OD) emissions during a study conducted in March.
The study, "Feasibility of New Technology to Comprehensively Characterize Air Emissions from Full Scale Open Burning and Open Detonation," was conducted at TEAD's Ammunition Equipment and Manufacturing Directorate Test Site March 9-26.
The goal was just as the name states, to determine whether some new technologies could gather credible emissions data from OB/OD operations.
"We are taking various technologies and using them simultaneously to determine their capability to measure OB/OD emissions data in real time," said Dr. Bill Mitchell, with Bill Mitchell and Associates, who is a consultant to the Defense Ammunition Center (DAC).
The study is being funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), under the supervision of Dr. Byung J. Kim of the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center. SERDP is the Department of Defense's environmental science and technology program. Its partners include the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as other federal and non-federal organizations. In this particular study, SERDP also partnered with Joint Munitions Command and the Defense Ammunition Center.
TEAD conducted OB/OD tests at the AEMD Test Site so the various agencies could use different methods to sample the emissions in real time simultaneously. The Integrated Measurement Systems for this study included the Flyer, ORS-PM sampling, and the PM- 10 measurement system.
Developed by Dr. Brian Gullett with the EPA, the Flyer is an aerial, balloon-borne instrument package used for measuring particulate matter and gasses. Integrated Systems Solutions Inc., worked with the EPA National Risk Management Research Laboratory team to get the Flyer in the air using a tethered balloon with a sail, which helped stabilize the Flyer while in the air and allowed it to stay inside the plume for the longest possible time.
An optical remote sensing (ORS) gaseous measurement system consisting of active and passive open-path Fourier Transform Infrared (OP-FTIR) spectrometers and Ultraviolet Differential Absorption Spectrometers (UV-DOAS) were used by Dr. Ram Hashmonay, with ENVIRON, Inc.
Dr. Mark Rood, University of Illinois, Champaign, Ill., and his research team also used a PM10 measurement system consisting of Micro-Pulse Light (MPL) and detection and ranging and Tapered Element Oscillating Microbalances (TEOMs).
To gather the appropriate amount of data, emissions were created using 100 pounds of M1 per burn pan during the open burn process and 50 to 100 pounds of TNT flakes per detonation during the open detonation process, said Roger Hale, TEAD's tests site facilitator.
Dr. George Thompson, President and CEO of Chemical Compliance Systems (CCS), was on site at TEAD as a consultant to the DAC, to ensure all the teams were gathering the correct data. He said CCS has compiled the largest hazardous materials database in the world, the Relational Chemical and Product Database (R-CPD).
"Part of the study is to find out what it is that goes up in the air, what are the particles and chemicals, and what are the hazards," Thompson added. He explained that chemicals undergo a chemical change once they are burned. An example of a chemical change is what happens to paper when it is burned: it turns into carbon and the paper is gone. You can never get the piece of paper back because it has undergone a chemical change.
"We are all trying to identify what it is that is in the plume produced by OB/OD operations and be confident with the results," Thompson said. "The purpose is to eventually be able to say with certainty that the plume is not toxic or, if in fact the emissions are of concern, we need to find another demil technique."
The final technical report for this study should be completed by June 31.
Editor's Note: Information for this article was also provided by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program and the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center.
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