Emissions Graph

« Sep 24, 2018

View Data For Sep 25, 2018

Notes:

Carbon Monoxide (CO) is the byproduct of incomplete combustion (refer to earlier discussions about combustion). The byproduct of perfect combustion is carbon dioxide and water. Modern trash-to-energy plants like Wheelabrator North Andover have such thorough combustion that carbon monoxide is measured in the low parts per million rather than percent (1% = 10,000 parts per million) whereas the amount of carbon dioxide is upwards of 10%. This represents a combustion efficiency of over 99.99%! The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection limits the Wheelabrator North Andover plant to 69 parts per million (69 ppm) of carbon monoxide in its emissions (corrected to 7% oxygen) during normal trash combusting operations. This limit does not apply during periods when the facility is burning natural gas, the first three hours of a start-up or shutdown or during a process malfunction.