American Petroleum Institute

Monitoring near Refineries for Airborne Chemicals on the SARA Title III Section 313 List Volume II A Generic Study Design Protocol
 N PUBL 4494 VOL II

Annotation

Scope of the Generic Study Design Protocol

This Generic Study Design Protocol (GSDP) is focused on the project goal defined in Table 1-1: measuring ambient air concentrations at the refinery fenceline and estimating the impact of refinery emissions on these concentrations. Detailed, step-by-step guidance is provided for this study objective. Other project goals or study objectives will be listed in Section 3.0, but it is beyond the scope of this GSDP to provide detailed guidance for other study objectives. For example. this document is not designed to provide guidance for occupational exposure (workplace) monitoring or for measurements of EPA Criteria Pollutants.

This GSDP also does not address air quality projects that use a regional monitoring approach. The regional monitoring approach has as a goal the estimation of industrial airborne emissions on ambient air quality in a geographical region. However, this approach usually does not address the impact of individual facilities. Although many of the considerations are very similar. this GSDP has not been developed to produce a study design for this kind of regional study.

A limitation on the application of this GSDP follows from the fact that it focuses on airborne chemical concentrations measured at ground level near the refinery fenceline. The primary sources of airborne chemicals at the fenceline are assumed to be fugitive emission sources in the refinery process area. Emissions from elevated point sources in the refinery are not specifically addressed, although it is recognized that under some conditions of terrain and meteorology these emissions could have an impact at the refinery fenceline. Air dispersion modeling can be used to predict the area of impact of emissions from elevated point sources. Air dispersion modeling will be discussed in Section 3.0.