“Best Available Techniques” research

With the aid of a BAT investigation it is investigated whether it is shown that an applied situation can be licensed. BAT stands for the legal concept of Best Available Techniques. According to legislation a company always needs to apply a BAT at the applying of a license. For air and odour emissions, this means practically, the making of reasoned choices between a large number of (technical) measures. These measures can be both source-oriented, process-integrated and/or downstream techniques. Some common downstream techniques are filtration, adsorption, absorption, biological techniques and afterburning.

EnviVice uses a roadmap so that all stakeholders can follow the assessment process in determining BAT of the specific situation. This will provide clarity for non-experts and will reduce the chance of objection procedures.

Step 1. Project plan with starting points BAT research including communication plan.

There are a number of aspects with need to be taken into account at the final BAT contemplations:

• environmental hygiene aspects (think of emission and immission
  requirements),
• economic aspects (costs and cost effectiveness),
• technical feasibility (think of proven techniques and suitability of existing process),
• waste gas characteristics (temperature, composition, flue gas flow rate, etc.),

The communication plan aims to clarify who the other stakeholders are and how and when the information from the study should be presented.

Step 2. Process analysis, material balances, literature research and possible additional emission measurements.

It is clear that the precious air situation needs to be correctly mapped in order to come to a thorough BAT research. If it appears that the available information is insufficient or unreliable, it may be desirable to conduct additional emission research.

Step 3. Quick-scan measures, drawing up scenario’s, develop BAT assessment including cost effectiveness and proposition for a final scenario.

Based on practical experiences, documents and expert judgment, a large number of technical and/or economical measures will not be feasible in the quick-scan phase. These measures will not be taken into account when drawing up scenario’s.

Eventually a minimum of 3 technical feasible scenario’s (a scenario can consist of one or more measures) will be developed, including cost effectiveness. An example is given below of thecalculated cost effectiveness of a number of drawn up odour reduction scenario’s for a production plant.