The 3rd Annual Corn Milling and Ethanol Plant Air Emissions Compliance Seminar covered everything from combustors to oxidizers for attendees in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on Nov. 11.

Presented by Eisenmann Corporation and Air Resource Specialists, the seminar featured an air emissions regulatory overview and combustion theories for dryers, boilers and other fired equipment, as well as information on NOx burners, thermal oxidizers and waste heat boilers, vapor combustors, regenerative thermal oxidizers, scrubbers and wet electrostatic precipitators (WESPs).

According to Air Resource Specialists' Howard Gephart, the focus of the seminar was on pollution control systems, how they work and where they can be applied. Gephart gave a "state of the state" presentation at the seminar, highlighting existing air emissions from ethanol plants with and without pollution control tools, like thermal oxidizers.

An additional discussion about fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was led by Jim Meador of Western Environmental Testing, Casper, Wyo., detailing a laser beam that can pick up 100 different compounds from a stack exhaust.

"Normally you'd have to do a different analysis in which the cost would be inhibitive," Meador told EPM. "That's how this has become a useful tool."

By showing instantaneous emissions levels, TFIR could be a big step forward in the ethanol industry, Eisenmann's Howard Hohl told EPM.

November's conference was the third ethanol plant emissions seminar to be sponsored by Eisenmann and Air Resource Specialists. In December 2002, they held a similar conference in Sioux Falls, S.D., and in May they took their conference to Peoria, Ill.

"We're moving it around from place to place where we think it will attract different plants," Gephart told EPM. He added Kansas City might be the next site for a seminar in March 2004.